Business of the House

Theresa May: May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the forthcoming business?

Harriet Harman: Mr. Speaker, you informed the House on Wednesday of the subjects for debate on the Queen's Speech. The business for next week will be as follows:
	Monday 8 December—Business of the House motion, followed by proceedings on a motion to establish a Speaker's Committee on the search of offices on the parliamentary estate, followed by continuation of the debate on the Queen's Speech. The subjects for debate, as you announced, Mr. Speaker, will be employment, universities and skills, and housing.
	Tuesday 9 December—General debate on European affairs.
	Wednesday 10 December—Continuation of the debate on the Queen's Speech. Foreign affairs and defence will be debated.
	Thursday 11 December—Continuation of the debate on the Queen's Speech. Health and education will be debated.
	Friday 12 December—The House will not be sitting.
	The provisional business for the week commencing 15 December will include:
	Monday 15 December—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen's Speech. The economy, pensions and welfare will be debated.
	Tuesday 16 December— Estimates (1st allotted day). There will be a debate on energy prices, fuel poverty and Ofgem, followed by a debate on dental services. Details will be given in the  Official Report.
	 [The details are as follows: Energy prices, Fuel poverty and Ofgem ( 11th  Report from the Business and Enterprise Committee, HC 293; Government response -  7 th special Report HC1069; and further Oral Evidence of 24 and 25 November); and Dental servic es (5th  Report from the Health Committee, HC 289; and Government response— Cm 7470).]
	At 10 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
	Wednesday 17 December—Third Reading of the Banking Bill, followed by motion to consider the Value Added Tax (Change of Rate) Order 2008.
	Thursday 18 December—Motion on the Christmas recess Adjournment.
	I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall will be:
	Thursday 18 December—A debate on the annual report from the Foreign Affairs Committee on human rights.

Theresa May: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us next week's business. I have some serious points to raise about the business next week, but before that there are some issues that I want to raise relating to matters outside the House.
	First, I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House are concerned about the latest tragic news from Zimbabwe, so will the Leader of the House make sure that before the Christmas recess the House is informed about steps being taken to resolve the political crisis in Zimbabwe and to ensure that those innocent people are given the help that they desperately need?
	Yesterday the Prime Minister announced a new scheme to help home owners who have lost their jobs and are fearful of losing their homes too. Before we debate housing next week, will the Housing Minister make a statement on the details of the scheme, setting out how it will work, who it will help and which lenders are signed up to it?
	With only eight sitting days left before Christmas, will the Leader of the House give us a date for the Chancellor's oral statement to the House on Equitable Life?
	I turn to the business for next week. Mr. Speaker, we welcomed your statement yesterday on the search by police of the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and seizure of equipment and material from his office, and welcome the decision to set up a Speaker's Committee to look into the matter. I remind the Leader of the House that in his statement yesterday, Mr. Speaker said that the Committee was
	"to report as soon as possible."—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 3.]
	The details were to be set out in a Government motion.
	Today we have that Government motion. It bears no resemblance to the statement by Mr. Speaker and no resemblance to what the House understood would be an immediate and speedy inquiry into the police action. Far from an immediate inquiry, the motion says that the Committee will immediately adjourn and will not meet not just until after the police inquiry is finished, but until any criminal proceedings are finished. In other words, it might not meet for months. And the Committee is to reflect the balance of the House. In other words, it will be dominated by the Government. Does the Leader of the House not accept that it is in the Government's own interests to ensure that there can be no suggestion that there is interference in the work of the Committee by the Government?
	I am sure the Leader of the House, like the Prime Minister yesterday, will hide behind the need not to affect the police investigation, but does she not accept that there are different issues at stake? The police investigation is into the leak of information from the Home Office. The Speaker's Committee will consider the seizure by police of material from the office of a Member of the House and police interference with the ability of a Member of the House to do their job. At heart lies the relationship between a Member and their constituents, who rely on the confidentiality of any information that they give us or material that they share with us.
	The matter raises issues of concern across the whole House but, typically, the Government are curtailing debate to three hours, including debate on the business motion. We should have a full day's debate on this matter. Of course, we should not lose a day's Queen's Speech debate on education, skills and housing, so will the Leader of the House change the business and give us a full day's debate on the Speaker's Committee motion, another full day's debate on education, skills and housing and let the Queen's Speech debate go on a day longer?
	Yesterday, Mr. Speaker made it clear that in future a warrant will always be required when a search of a Member's office or parliamentary papers is carried out. The Prime Minister refused to agree with that. Does the Leader of the House agree with that new procedure? Yesterday, the Prime Minister refused to say that he regretted that a Member's office was searched without a warrant. Last night on television, the Leader of the House also refused to do so. Will she now tell the House that she does regret the fact that a Member's office was searched without a warrant?
	In relation to the confidentiality of constituents' business, can the Leader of the House confirm that to access the electronic files and e-mails of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford, the police would have gone into the parliamentary server and on to the shared drive, and will therefore have been able to access all hon. Members' e-mails and files? Can the Leader of the House give an assurance that no other hon. Member's files or e-mails were accessed by the police?
	Finally, the Home Secretary is making a statement on this matter this morning. However, the Home Office reportedly passed responsibility for the leak investigation to the Cabinet Office. When will the Minister for the Cabinet Office come to the House to make a statement setting out what he knew about the matter and his involvement in it? At the heart of this issue lies the ability of Members of this House to do their job and represent their constituents. It is the job of the Leader of the House to protect the interests of this House. The motion for Monday's business manifestly fails to do so; the Leader of the House now needs to think again.

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Lady raised the question of Zimbabwe. There is a state of emergency in that country because of the cholera epidemic, and I am sure that that issue will be very much on Members' minds next Wednesday when we have the Queen's Speech debate on foreign affairs.
	On housing, the right hon. Lady mentioned the Government's announcement about additional help so that people whose income is affected by the global economic circumstances affecting the economy of this country should not have to fear that, as a result, they will face repossession. She will know that what was announced yesterday is part of a number of measures. One is that if people lose their jobs, they will be able to look to social security to help them with the interest payments on their homes; that has been increased to cover mortgages of up to £200,000. It has been brought forward to January, and will be available after 13 weeks instead of 39 weeks. She will also be aware that the courts are operating on a protocol that repossession must be granted only as a matter of absolute last resort, and that the banks are agreeing that they will not start proceedings until six months after the relevant person falls into arrears; previously, the period was three months.
	In respect of the arrangements announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister yesterday, they are a further Government guarantee to protect people. People will not lose their homes if their income falls because they are put on short time or lose their jobs. The arrangements are by way of a Government guarantee to banks in order that they should allow interest deferral for a period of two years. Further details are being worked up and will be made available to the House.
	The right hon. Lady raised the question of Equitable Life, and a statement on that will be made before Christmas— [Interruption.] The Prime Minister said yesterday that it would be made before Christmas.
	The right hon. Lady mentioned the motion that I have laid before the House to facilitate debate on Monday. It was tabled yesterday and is available to Members. The business motion is amendable and the motion is amendable. I would say that there are four principles that are important for us all to—

Hon. Members: Cover-up!

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Harriet Harman: There are four principles that, as Leader of the House, I strongly support. The first is that Members should be able to get on with their job as Members of Parliament, the job to which they have been elected, and that the Opposition must be able to get on with their job of holding the Government to account—that is a job not just for Opposition Members, but for Government Back Benchers as well.
	The second principle is that Members are not above the law, and the third principle is that we should support the operational independence of the police. It is very important for hon. Members to bear that in mind at all times—including later today and on Monday.
	I add a fourth principle that I hope that the House would support: the impartiality and professionalism of civil servants and the civil service and the upholding of the civil service code. I will not respond to the right hon. Lady's invitation to comment on the police investigation—that would, in my view, invite me to interfere with the police carrying on their job in respect of a current investigation.
	The security of hon. Members' e-mails is a security matter and therefore a matter for the House authorities.

Gordon Prentice: Will the House be able to add names to the Speaker's Committee or leave names off? Will Members be able to apply to join the Committee, because I would rather like to be a member?  [ Laughter. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will put the hon. Gentleman's name on the waiting list.

Harriet Harman: As I said before, the motion will be amendable.

Simon Hughes: I thank the Leader of the House for her statement. I also thank her for the fact that we know that we will have a statement by the Home Secretary today and the debate on Monday. I appreciate that outside the House people are concerned about their homes, jobs and finances, but these matters are to do with the House and its business. I will work on them with my colleagues in the Conservative party and in other parties, and with Labour Back Benchers, to ensure that the rights and privileges that we have on behalf of our constituents are upheld. I ask these questions, or make these comments, in that context.
	First, let me say to the Leader of the House that your statement yesterday, Mr. Speaker, was helpful but made it absolutely clear that somewhere among the authorities of this House and/or the police there was a fundamental failure to protect the rights and interests of our constituents. We have great respect for you, Mr. Speaker, for the Serjeant at Arms, for the Leader of the House and for the police—both for the offices and the persons—but there can be no escaping the fact that we must have accountability for the failures that meant that police came into this building without a warrant. That is unacceptable, and I hope that the Leader of the House accepts that. Although she appears, understandably, to be separate from this issue, she has the same duty as we do in making sure that the rights and liberties of all Members of Parliament are upheld, and that if Officers of the House, however eminent, do not do that, they are held to account. I cannot say otherwise, because it is really important that we do that.
	Let me also say that the police, whom we respect, have a duty to be respectful of the job that we do on behalf of our constituents, and if they have made mistakes, then they, too, must be held to account, because they are not above the law either; nor are they above understanding the constitutional position that they have in relation to this place.
	Secondly, I will not stand up here and support civil servants acting improperly—I share the Leader of the House's view about that—but the Government have failed to bring a civil service Bill before Parliament, although they have had opportunities to do so since 2004, when we had a draft Bill. May we have an assurance that in this Session we will have a civil service Bill so that we can legislate to put the rights and responsibilities of civil servants on to a statutory footing, for which we have argued for a very long time?
	The Leader of the House announced that the week after next we will have a debate on the prayer that my hon. Friends and I have tabled on the VAT increase. It is nonsense that the Chancellor can come to Parliament and make a pre-Budget statement that is actually a Budget and that has immediate effect the following week—on 1 December, when the tax changes were implemented—yet Parliament has no say in that decision. Last year, the Prime Minister said at the launch of his leadership campaign:
	"I want to build a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform that strengthens the accountability of all who hold power".
	I put it to the Leader of the House that he is not succeeding if he brings measures to Parliament whereby Parliament has no right to vote on money spent and money raised.
	Unless this Parliament can take some of its powers back and manage the spending and raising of money, we are in trouble, and we are not doing our job.
	Lastly, I put this point to the Leader of the House throughout the last Session, and she was sympathetic in words but not yet in action. We have a relatively short legislative programme. During the previous Session, week after week, there was no time for amendments or new clauses tabled by her colleagues or those in other parties to be debated. Will she today give an undertaking that all legislation this year will be properly debated and that there will be a new procedure, like that of many Parliaments, through which a business committee is established so that Parliament can decide its business, not the Government? We need less power with the Executive and more power with Parliament and the people, and unless she can deliver that, she and her colleagues will fail the country badly.

Harriet Harman: I take it that the hon. Gentleman was saying that we should have cross-party support for the four principles that I have set out as Leader of the House—the principles of MPs being able to get on with their job, the police being operationally independent, the impartiality of the civil service and MPs not being above the law. We should not pick or choose one or the other of those four principles for our convenience. It is incumbent on this House to support all those principles and make sure that we get the balance right. I know that the hon. Gentleman understands and reflects deeply on constitutional issues, and he will recognise that we need a cross-party, whole-House approach to the question of the four principles, not a party political divide.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the civil service code, which we support, and we also introduced the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 in order that there should be provision for civil servants who felt that it was on their conscience to disclose information in the public interest to give out information.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about all legislation being properly debated. It is my concern to ensure that Bills are in as good an order as possible before they are introduced to the House, so that amendments can only be those introduced as a result of debate in the House. I share the view of the House, and support it in its concern, that policy should be established clearly in advance so that a Bill is brought to the House in as complete a form as possible. We always have to introduce amendments if they have been tabled in another place or by Back Benchers from across the House, but I agree that it is my responsibility to ensure that all legislation is properly debated.

Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with me and most Members of this House about the importance of the independence of Members of Parliament and the way in which they should be allowed to carry on with their work? Many of our constituents will not forgive us if we get this matter out of proportion but accept that we are in the midst of a global economic meltdown, and my constituents would be very displeased if we were distracted from the main purpose of this House, which is making sure that the people of this country survive and thrive in this global economic turmoil.

Harriet Harman: I agree with the sentiments that lie behind my hon. Friend's points. We have to have a proper focus on the four principles that I have set out today. They are important constitutional principles, and we should guard them jealously and properly. However, there are also important issues on a daily basis for our constituents throughout the country who are worried about their jobs, their businesses or their homes. The business of Government is to ensure that we act and do everything that we can against a background of a global economic crisis. We need to ensure that we give people real help now, and more than that, we must ensure that the economy in this country is in a position to move forward when the downturn ends.

Richard Bacon: Does the Leader of the House agree that our constituents should be concerned if they are subject to unlawful search and seizure? Does she agree that newspaper offices should be concerned if they are subject to unlawful search and seizure? Does she understand that if Members of Parliament cannot be protected from unlawful search and seizure, why should anyone else think that they can be either? That is the key point. When—as, eventually, it surely will—the heat goes out of this episode, during which, I am afraid, there has been disgraceful conduct, we must appreciate that the key point is that our offices and the confidential communications from our constituents should be protected from unlawful search and seizure.
	I invite the right hon. and learned Lady to make a constructive response, so will she tell me what she thinks that we need to do—we do not need to wait for the Committee, which, as we have just learned, may not meet for months—to ensure that confidential correspondence from our constituents is protected from unlawful search and seizure?

Harriet Harman: I think that no one, whether hon. Members or ordinary citizens of this country, should be subjected to unlawful search and seizure. The issues that the hon. Gentleman raised will be debated next Monday. I remind hon. Members that, although we must ensure that we protect the privilege of Parliament and the rights of Members of Parliament to get on with their job without unwarranted interference from the law, we must also respect the operational independence of the police.

John Reid: First, the Leader of the House is correct to base the matter on principles other than those that protect only our interests. The whole picture must be seen. Secondly, will she urge hon. Members to avoid, if possible, making blatantly prejudicial statements, which imply that there is a prima facie case of unlawful activity by the police? That is untrue and will prejudice the investigation. Thirdly, we must remember that all the parties to the dispute—the House authorities, the Home Office, the Cabinet Office, Members of Parliament and the police—have the opportunity to state their case except the police. We should give them the benefit of the doubt until the investigation has been carried out rather than prejudicing the inquiry before it has begun.

Harriet Harman: I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. It is incumbent on us all not to do anything that would prejudice the prosecution—if there is a prosecution. It is also incumbent on us all to do nothing that might prejudice the defence. We all have a responsibility. There is currently a police investigation and there are suspects. It is not for one side of the House to be the prosecution and the other to be the defence. The matter should not be party political—[Hon. Members: "Quite right."] I am glad that I have the whole House's support on that. It should not be party political—it is a matter for the criminal justice system. When there is a current police investigation, none of us should take sides.

Nicholas Winterton: Does not the Leader of the House accept that the financial crisis is totally separate from what occurred last Thursday? It is wrong to keep saying that the House should debate the financial crisis and not matters relating to the House's integrity. Unless the House has independence and integrity, it cannot deal with the matter properly. Will she think again about providing only a three-hour debate on Monday? As far as I am concerned, we have a mission to try to restore some integrity and independence to the House. How can we do that unless a wide range of Members from all parties can participate in the debate? Will she provide a full-day's debate? That was my interpretation of Mr. Speaker's responsible and helpful statement yesterday.

Harriet Harman: I will seek to ensure that the House has adequate time to debate important issues such as the economy, jobs, small businesses and people's homes and focus appropriately on what I have acknowledged to be important constitutional principles. We must have time to consider both and strike the right balance between them. As I said, the business of the House motion is amendable.

David Taylor: Is it in order to drag the discussion back to items that are a high priority for millions of UK citizens? I refer to those persons with disabilities. I tabled early-day motion 2191 in the previous Session and referred to it in business questions, when I asked about the ratification of the United Nations convention of the rights of persons with disabilities.
	 [That this House is concerned by the delay in the Govern ment' s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; notes that to date 41 signatories have ratified this progressive international human rights instrument, including Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, China, Cuba, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Niger, Paraguay, Qatar, South Africa, Spain an d Tunisia; believes that the UK' s delay in ratifica tion compromises the Government' s existing achievements and objectives in tackling disability discrimination; and calls upon the Government to ratify the Convention without reservation or further delay.]
	The Leader of the House gave me a helpful answer and the strong impression that ratification would be announced before the Christmas recess. Can she confirm that and say what the form of that ratification will be? Will it require primary legislation? If so, was that announced in an appendix to the Queen's Speech yesterday, because I could not find it?

Harriet Harman: The rights and opportunities of, and support for, people with disabilities are very much part of the Government's legislative programme, in particular the Equality Bill and the public sector duty on all public authorities to support the inclusion of people with disabilities, protect them from discrimination and ensure that they have the right levels of support. As for my hon. Friend's question about ratification, I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions writes to him about that.

David Heath: I had hoped that after your helpful statement yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the House would have taken the opportunity to bring the parties together on the issue. Nevertheless, the motion before us today appears to be taking the mickey. Having said that, let me return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) raised, which concerns the other constitutional issue that we should be discussing. Our primary responsibility in the House is the control of supply—the control of taxation—yet just before Prorogation, we were presented not just with a Budget, but to all intents and purposes with a radical Budget, on which we had no debate except for your agency, Mr. Speaker, and no opportunity to vote. Is the House doing its duty on behalf of the British people—a duty set out in the Bill of Rights—to ensure that there is no taxation without parliamentary consent?

Harriet Harman: We have many occasions to debate the economy and it is right that we should do so. As for the motion, it will be debatable on the proceedings on a motion to establish the Speaker's Committee. That will be a business of the House matter that will be debated and voted on by hon. Members on Monday.

Fiona Mactaggart: In reply to an Opposition Member, the Leader of the House said that we would have the opportunity to discuss Zimbabwe on Wednesday. I am more concerned about the plight of the citizens of that benighted country who are stranded in Britain without having had their applications for asylum granted, but whom it is not planned to return to Zimbabwe. They are starving. Could we not have an announcement before Christmas on arrangements to allow them to work?

Harriet Harman: I think that my colleagues in the Home Office are very well aware of the difficulties for people from Zimbabwe, to which there are no forcible removals, and whether they are in a position to support themselves. I know that my colleagues will have heard the points that my hon. Friend has made, but in any event I shall refer her points to them.

Michael Howard: Since the narrowly drawn terms of reference for the committee of senior Members that the Leader of the House has set out seem to relate entirely to the future, what conceivable justification is there for providing that it should not start its work until the criminal investigation has concluded?

Harriet Harman: The right hon. and learned Gentleman, being a former barrister and a former Home Secretary, will know that it is very important that we prejudice neither the prosecution nor the defence in this case. Mr. Speaker has said that the arrangements for a search of the House in the future are already changed. It is important that we discuss and ensure that the constitutional principles, all four of which need to be upheld by the House, are the subject of reflection. The Committee will undoubtedly be part of that, but it is not wise to set up a concurrent investigation when a police investigation is under way. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman reflects on that even for a few moments, he will know that I am right.

David Drew: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for proving all the doubting Thomases wrong: we did bring forward in the Queen's Speech the marine and coastal access Bill, which is long overdue. However, it was somewhat disappointing that the floods and water Bill will be published only in draft form. Will she seek early publication of that Bill, so that we can undertake pre-legislative scrutiny? The Bill is important for those of us in certain parts of the country and we need it at the earliest opportunity.

Harriet Harman: Yesterday, I wrote to the Chair of the Liaison Committee about which Bills should be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. I take my hon. Friend's point that the floods and water Bill should be subject to such scrutiny.

Michael Spicer: Why have the Government overruled the Speaker's statement that he alone would choose the membership of his Committee?

Harriet Harman: The motion says that the Speaker will choose the members of the Committee according to the composition of the House.

Mary Creagh: May I add my voice to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), as many of my Wakefield constituents are facing their second Christmas outside their home, following the devastating floods in 2007 and the repeat floods of this summer in 2008? I know that this is a real issue for right hon. and hon. Members who represent Hull as well, so may we have a debate, perhaps in Government time, or pre-legislative scrutiny to consider what measures can be brought in to manage better the risk of flooding in our areas, particularly in Yorkshire and in the west country?

Harriet Harman: Those matters might well be debated and considered alongside the marine and coastal access Bill.
	May I take the opportunity to remind Members that the motion on the Speaker's Committee clearly says:
	"That the Committee consist of seven members appointed by the Speaker"?

William Cash: The Leader of the House wrote to me yesterday asking for my views on these constitutional questions—and I hope that I will not get arrested for disclosing that fact. In addition to all the other matters that have already properly been raised, does she agree that a Committee of this kind should be chaired by a member of the Opposition? Furthermore, in respect of her remarks on the criminal law, does she accept that the rules and precedents of this House already adequately deal not only with concurrence, but with the whole question of the law and custom of this House in relation to criminal matters?

Harriet Harman: I am not quite sure about the hon. Gentleman's final point. I know that the hon. Gentleman, as a former shadow Attorney-General, has great experience and has reflected at length on these issues, but if he is suggesting that we can with impunity have a concurrent investigation by the House of something that is subject to a police investigation, I am sure that he would not want to say that.

Sandra Gidley: Many of my constituents, particularly those who work for Ford, are worried about whether they will still be in their jobs after Christmas. Given that today's figures show a significant decrease in demand, will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on the future of the British car industry to ensure that we have one at the end of this recession?

Harriet Harman: The Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has said that we are mindful to take whatever action the Government can take to support manufacturing industry and the important manufacturing skills base in our economy during the global downturn. I will draw the hon. Lady's comments to his attention. There will be an opportunity to debate those issues on Monday 15 December as well as at next Thursday's business questions.

George Young: On Monday, when the Leader of the House moves the motion in her name on the Speaker's Committee, will she be able to explain to the House how this Committee, which will have no powers whatever, will be able to carry out the task outlined by Mr. Speaker yesterday more effectively than an existing Committee of the House, which has all the necessary powers, has no party majority and was specifically set up to look into issues of privilege?

Harriet Harman: I have tabled a motion to facilitate debate of the issue that arose in the Speaker's statement—that there should be a Speaker's Committee to which these matters should be referred rather than to the Standards and Privileges Committee, which the right hon. Gentleman chairs. That is a matter for the Speaker.

Ann Cryer: Will it be possible in the near future to have a debate on the requirement for Criminal Records Bureau checks for those working with children being extended to madrassahs? In my view, the current situation discriminates against Muslim children.

Harriet Harman: Obviously, if any child care services are being provided in madrassahs, they are subject to inspection and registration. If my hon. Friend is identifying the fact that such provision is being made, in effect, in madrassahs but is not coming within the inspection regime, I will invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to look into that and liaise with her on it. We need to ensure that all children are protected.

Andrew MacKay: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, you obviously took great trouble to be very clear and precise about the nature of Monday's debate. May I ask the Leader of the House why she has so totally ignored the Speaker's advice?

Harriet Harman: I have tabled a motion for debate by the House. It is amendable, and I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that he, too, should be supporting all four principles to which I have referred. I do not want to be the only person besides you, Mr. Speaker, who is concerned about and alive to the issue of the sub judice rule. I would say that it is quite wrong to suggest that I have any other motive than to protect those four principles, one of which is the sub judice rule.

Andrew MacKinlay: Can the Leader of the House help to clarify one point that has troubled me overnight?  [Interruption.] No, it is a serious point. A certificate was signed by the Serjeant at Arms waiving the need for a warrant. Surely the only person who could have done that is the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). If somebody wanted to search the flat that I rent, my managing agent could not authorise that. Only I could, surely. Can we have some clarification of whether the only the person who can say, "Yes, you can come into my flat or my office," and authorise that is that person himself or herself? Is that not the case?

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the question of the ownership of material, and also the premises, and of consent to enter them. Those are two different things. I would say that they might well bear examination, but I would counsel him, too, that examination should take place after the current police investigation is concluded. Those issues certainly should be looked at.

Douglas Hogg: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, you said to the House in your statement that to the Speaker's Committee should be referred the matter of the seizure by the police of the material belonging to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and that the report should be done as soon as possible. Does the Leader of the House accept that the motion that she has placed before the House complies with the Speaker's statement in neither respect? It does not deal with the seizure of the material and it specifically prevents an early report.

Harriet Harman: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is himself a learned Queen's Counsel and when he reads the motion he will understand exactly why I tabled it in the terms that I did. I seek to protect all four principles—important constitutional issues of great concern that arise from this matter. The motion does that.

Greg Mulholland: Last week, we had the devastating coroner's verdict from the inquest on my constituent, Dr. John Hubley, who died as a result of "a catalogue" of failures at the Eccleshill independent sector treatment centre, described by the coroner as "mickey mouse" and "a recipe for disaster". Already, I have written to the Secretary of State for Health to ask for a full public inquiry, but as this matter has thrown up the issue of safety at independent treatment centres such as Eccleshill, will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on this to restore some confidence among my constituents, but also among the wider public, that it is appropriate to send NHS patients to that centre?

Harriet Harman: Obviously, we want to make sure that there is absolute patient safety in the national health service, the private sector and independent treatment centres, and I will bring the hon. Gentleman's comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

Julian Brazier: While sharing the fury felt by colleagues in all parts of the House about the House's own issue, may I bring our attention back to the 100,000 workers in ports today, many of whom face redundancy? The woefully inadequate concession by the Government on the ridiculous, huge back-rating demand that has been put on hundreds of small businesses still leaves the directors in a position where they will be breaking the law if they continue to trade for more than another few weeks. May we have an early debate on this matter?

Harriet Harman: We will have a debate on the economy on 15 December, at the conclusion of the debate on the Queen's Speech, and the hon. Gentleman can, no doubt, raise those matters then.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Yesterday's statement revealed that the police had been in possession of the computer of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) for four days, and they will therefore have been able to access the parliamentary information and e-mail system that contains files of constituency records held by all of us, including e-mails we may have exchanged with my hon. Friend, possibly on complaints against the police including named police officers. Has the Leader of the House urgently taken steps before next week's debate to retrieve any such information so that we can restore the confidentiality and integrity of exchanges between us and our constituents, and will she not shuffle off responsibility about this on to unnamed House officials and instead start to stand up herself for the rights of this House, Back Benchers and those whom we represent?

Harriet Harman: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker addressed the question of the return of the seized material, and Members can rest assured that I will stand up for all the four principles—not just one, but all four—in respect of all parts of the House in this matter.

Julian Lewis: I am sure that, like every other assiduous constituency MP, the Leader of the House has during the course of her parliamentary career frequently given absolute assurances to constituents who impart sensitive personal information to her that what they say will be covered as if it were the secrets of the confessional. In the light of recent developments, what advice can she give to Members as to what we should say to constituents who urge us to treat what they are about to impart to us with total confidentiality?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman will know that, as was said by Members yesterday, we are not above the law; subject to the proper procedures and processes, we are subject to the criminal law.

Crispin Blunt: Will the right hon. and learned Lady confirm that the statement on Equitable Life will be an oral statement and that, given its importance, it will be given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and can she tell the House what considerations led her to produce a motion that was inconsistent with Mr. Speaker's statement yesterday?

Harriet Harman: The details of the statement on Equitable Life will come forth in due course and, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, before Christmas. I would expect it to be an oral statement. The hon. Gentleman adds to the complaints across the House about the motion I have tabled to facilitate a proper debate in this House; he, like other Members, can amend it if he so chooses.

Mark Harper: My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) asked the Leader of the House whether the police had access to information pertaining not just to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), but to other Members on the House's IT systems. The Leader of the House tried to shuffle that responsibility off on to unnamed people, but she is a member of the House of Commons Commission, and she is therefore a member of the House authorities; and she is the only one whom we can bring to the Dispatch Box to answer questions. Members will want to know that their information is secure. A breach of that would be a breach of the Data Protection Act, which in itself would be a criminal offence. The Leader of House must take this matter seriously, and be able to answer, if not now then in the debate on Monday.

Harriet Harman: Both the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who asked that question, and I are members of the Members Estimate Committee and the House of Commons Commission, and we are available to discuss any matter with the Speaker and advise him on any matter. Mr. Speaker has already made comments in his statement about the return of the computers.

Philip Davies: May we have a debate on sentencing? On Saturday 29 November, a judge sent somebody to prison for six weeks for theft, yet, unbelievably and directly as a result of the early release scheme, the same offender came before the same judge three days later, on Tuesday 2 December, and was again charged with theft. Is it not a scandal that somebody can be sent to prison for six weeks by a judge and be out of prison within a few days, because of the early release scheme, free to commit the same offence? Should not the criminal justice system be focusing on sorting out this kind of scandal, rather than on a Member of Parliament going about his legitimate business?

Harriet Harman: There will be a debate on justice and home affairs after the Home Secretary's statement today.

Peter Bone: I listened very carefully to your statement, Mr. Speaker, and I was very encouraged by the fact that we are going to have a debate on Monday. We have learned, however, that it is to be a three-hour debate, so what will happen is that the Front-Bench spokespeople and senior Back Benchers will speak, but junior Back Benchers will not have an opportunity to do so. I fully support your efforts, Mr. Speaker—unlike some Members of this House. Would the Leader of the House please explain why the debate will be a truncated one, rather than a full day's debate?

Harriet Harman: I tabled a motion to allow for three hours' debate. This was discussed in points of order yesterday and it has been discussed for the best part of 50 minutes today. I know that hon. Members will want to make speeches and put forward proposals, and the opportunity for debate will be on Monday.

Government Information (Unauthorised Release)

Jacqui Smith: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the current police investigation into the unauthorised release of government information. As has been widely recognised across the House, some very important principles are at stake in this matter: that nobody should be above the law; that the police should have the operational independence to conduct their investigations without fear or favour; that Members of this House should be able to do their work and be able to hold the Government to account; and that the impartiality of the civil service should be protected. Members of this House will, of course, understand our obligation not to prejudice an ongoing police investigation, but I shall be as helpful as I can in my statement.
	On 8 October 2008, following consultations with the Home Office, the Cabinet Office requested the assistance of the Metropolitan Police Service in investigating a series of leaks. That request was made by the Cabinet Office, as it has ultimate responsibility for the security and integrity of the working of government. No Cabinet Office Minister was involved in the decision. The request followed a number of internal Home Office leak inquiries, which had not identified the source of the leaks. There was concern that an individual—or individuals—in the Home Office who had access to sensitive material was prepared to leak that information.
	Faced with what appeared to be the systematic leaking of classified information over a sustained period, given the damage that that was doing to the effective conduct of Government business and because of the sensitive issues, including national security, that the Home Office deals with, I agreed with the view of Sir David Normington, my Department's permanent secretary, that it was essential to request police assistance in identifying the source of those leaks. The sustained level of leaking that had already taken place clearly suggested that this could go on, would escalate, and that more information of greater sensitivity could potentially leak.  [Interruption.]
	Since the request for police assistance was made— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Allow the Home Secretary to speak. The subject is important.

Jacqui Smith: Since the request for police assistance was made, the Home Office has co-operated fully with the police investigation. A full list of relevant leaks, including those involving highly classified material, was passed to the police for their consideration.
	As acting commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson set out in his statement yesterday, after initial inquiries the Crown Prosecution Service was consulted. The police officers involved were satisfied that they had reasonable grounds to make an arrest of a junior Home Office civil servant. On 17 November, I was informed by Sir David Normington that an arrest of a Home Office civil servant was likely in the next few days. On 19 November, the Home Office civil servant was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. On 27 November, the police arrested the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office.
	As the statement issued by Sir David Normington on 28 November made clear, he was informed by the police at about 1.45 pm on 27 November that a search was about to be conducted of the home and offices of a member of the Opposition Front Bench. Sir David was subsequently told that an arrest had been made. This was the first time that anybody in the Home Office was informed that a Member of this House was the subject of the police investigation. I have made it clear that neither I nor any other Government Minister knew until after the arrest of the hon. Member that he—or any other hon. Member—was the subject of a police investigation or was to be arrested. I hope that those who have asserted the contrary will now withdraw their claims.
	Let me be clear that even if I had been informed, I believe it would have been wholly inappropriate for me to seek to intervene in the operational decisions being taken by the police. I will not do that and I should not do that. On 1 December, I spoke to the acting commissioner to reassure myself that the investigation was being pursued diligently, sensitively and in a proportionate manner—[Hon. Members: "Sensitively?"] Sir Paul informed me— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Jacqui Smith: Sir Paul informed me of his intention to set up a review of the handling of the case to date, which I welcomed. The following day he announced that Chief Constable Ian Johnston would conduct that review. In that telephone call with Sir Paul I expressed my support for the operational independence of the police from political intervention—as I have done previously, as I have done since, and as I will continue to do.
	Nobody in the House should doubt the sensitivity of the investigation or the importance of the issues involved. I welcome your statement yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and your decision to set up a Committee of seven Members of this House. Your statement also set out the circumstances in which the police asked for and gained consent to search the parliamentary office of the hon. Member for Ashford. I spoke to Sir Paul Stephenson yesterday evening to seek his clarification of those events. Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick has subsequently written to me to set out his understanding of the obligations the Met were under and his account of the steps they took. I am placing a copy of that letter in the Library. Sir Paul also assured me that Ian Johnston's review will cover those issues.
	I wholeheartedly support the right of every hon. Member to do their job, to hold the Government to account, and to make available information that is in the public interest, but the systematic leaking of government information raises issues that strike at the heart of our system of governance. Such activity is not about merely creating political embarrassment, for me or for any other Minister. Such activity threatens the respected role of the civil service in supporting our democracy in a politically impartial, honest and professional manner, and it drives a coach and horses through the civil service code, which states that civil servants should act
	"in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of Ministers, while at the same time ensuring that you will be able to establish the same relationship with those whom you may be required to serve in some future government."
	All of us, on both sides of the House, have a right to expect that our vital role should be protected, and we have a responsibility, too, to respect the law and uphold the proper workings of the civil service. I would be surprised—and indeed dismayed—if any hon. Member thought that that was not the case.
	I commend my statement to the House.

Dominic Grieve: I thank the Home Secretary for previous sight of her statement. The issues at stake are indeed very serious. They involve basic ministerial oversight over counter-terrorism police operations against a Member of this House which were heavy-handed and incompetent at best, and at worst an unwarranted assault on our democracy— [ Interruption. ] Let us be equally clear what is not at stake. We can all agree that MPs are not above the law, and that the police have no place in politics. Nor does this have anything to do with national security. There is not the slightest evidence of that, and Her Majesty's Opposition— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I now call for silence for the Opposition spokesman.

Dominic Grieve: There is not the slightest evidence of that and Her Majesty's Opposition take the integrity of official secrets as seriously as the Government, despite attempts by Government spokesmen to smear and spin to the contrary.
	The Home Secretary has regularly briefed me and my predecessor on matters of national security. Can she name one occasion when she has raised any concern that her confidence has not been kept? Can she now confirm that no known leaks from her Department relating to national security involve my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)?
	This episode has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with political embarrassment. Nor is it about confidentiality in the workplace, matters for which employment law provides a perfectly adequate remedy. If there have been 20 leaks or more, as the Government are briefing, the problem extends well beyond any facts relevant to my hon. Friend. It heralds a systematic breakdown in trust between officials and Ministers, arising from the Home Secretary's willingness to conceal failings in her own Department on matters of manifest public interest.
	The Home Office initiated the leak inquiry and knew that Opposition Members had commented on four disclosures reported in the media. Is it the case that for eight days after the arrest of Mr. Galley, the police were investigating my hon. Friend, but the Home Secretary had not the faintest idea about it? If she was cut out of the loop, was the Minister for the Cabinet Office or any other Minister or official there informed by the police that a Member of Parliament was the target of their investigation? If the Cabinet Office was kept updated, why was not the Home Secretary? Why was the Cabinet Office not kept updated if it had initiated the investigation? Were counter-terrorism police operating without any Home Office ministerial notification, oversight or accountability from start to finish?
	The Home Secretary has stated— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Dominic Grieve: The Home Secretary has stated that she was unaware at any point before the arrest that any Member of this House was part of the police investigation. Can she clarify some details? What was the exact remit of the investigation requested by the Cabinet Office of the police? Was it strictly confined to a request to investigate the commission of a criminal offence, and will she now put a copy of the written referrals from the Cabinet Office to the police in the Library so that we can study them? When did she or her officials receive updates on the police investigation? Who provided them and what did they cover? Did she at no point ask who the subjects of the investigation were, because it is clear that in the early stages of the investigation she was kept informed? Did she ask any questions at all?
	Does the Home Secretary still cling to her utterly flawed defence that there is nothing she could have said or done in advance of the arrest even if she had been aware? She undermined that implausible excuse on Tuesday by seeking assurances from the acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner that the investigation was being pursued diligently, sensitively and proportionately. If she can ask those basic questions after the arrest of my hon. Friend, why did she not ask questions before? She could have asked whether police had asked to interview my hon. Friend on a voluntary basis. She could have asked whether the deployment of more than 20 counter-terrorism officers to arrest a Member, search his offices, search Parliament and seize documents, phones and computers was proportionate and necessary. She could have asked whether the Director of Public Prosecutions had been consulted.
	Did the police try to obtain a warrant to search the House of Commons office from a magistrate before they came to see the Serjeant at Arms, and if so, were they refused? Were the police acting in compliance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and its codes? I have to say that the letter from Mr. Quick on the subject is a masterpiece of obfuscation. Does the Home Secretary agree with him, or with you, Mr. Speaker, in your statement, that no proper statement of rights to refuse entry was given to the Serjeant at Arms beforehand? I am afraid that I have to say that Mr. Quick's letter and your statement, Mr. Speaker, are incompatible.
	Of course Home Secretaries make statements about police operations. The right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) did so immediately after the 7/7 attacks, as did the Home Secretary herself after the Glasgow and Haymarket attacks. Based on her own practice, does she now accept that this can be done without prejudicing an investigation, and should be done in serious cases to maintain public confidence?
	Finally, seeing what is now emerging, does the Home Secretary regret her wilful ignorance in this whole affair and the decision to wash her hands of the basic responsibilities that come with her office? Who is in charge of the police, if she is not?

Jacqui Smith: May I first draw the hon. and learned Gentleman's attention to the public statement of Sir Paul Stephenson on the subject of whether counter-terrorism police officers—as he described them—were involved in the operation? As Sir Paul Stephenson makes clear, following the reorganisation in New Scotland Yard of the previous special branch and the previous counter-terror branch they are now working together under the heading of the counter-terrorism command. As he pointed out, it is not accurate to claim that they were counter-terror police officers; nor, as he has made quite clear, was this a counter-terror investigation.
	The hon. and learned Gentleman asserted several times that "there is not the slightest evidence". He does not know what evidence the police have. I do not know what evidence the police have—but I do know that it is wholly appropriate that the police should use their professional judgment to follow the evidence during the course of a police investigation without fear or favour. That comes to the heart of what appears to be a misunderstanding by the hon. and learned Gentleman and other Opposition Members about the difference between the operational independence of the police during an investigation and appropriate and important methods of accountability that, whether through the criminal justice system, the procedures set up by the House or the review that Sir Ian Johnston is carrying out, will appropriately report but will not interfere with the operational independence of the police. I made it completely clear in my statement that even if I had been informed about the investigation of a Member of this House I would have considered it wrong to intervene in that investigation. I am interested that the hon. and learned Gentleman does not seem to take the same view.
	On the point about the subjects of the investigation and when I was informed, it seems sensible and obvious to me that I would have been informed about an investigation taking place within the Home Office and the potential arrest of a Home Office official, and I was. I was not informed about the investigation and potential arrest of a Member, and I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman—although he has not taken this opportunity—will remove his continued assertion that I am not telling the truth.
	On the point about whether any other Minister asked for or received specific assurances, I believe that I have made it clear that no other Minister did.
	Finally, I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman would have more ably demonstrated that he believes that all the principles that I outlined are important if he had expressed any concern whatsoever about the nature of leaking from Departments. The Home Office deals with some of the most sensitive issues across Government. I believe that for a potential future Home Secretary to be so unconcerned—cavalier—about the leaking of information from the Home Office is a serious issue for the security of that information, for the impartiality of the civil service and for the good governance of this country.

Christopher Huhne: I am concerned at the new principle that the Home Secretary appears to be setting out that the leaking of information from the Government is in all circumstances something to be deplored. The reality is that the House's formal procedures for holding the Executive to account are so weak that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) has described them from the Government Benches as like "heckling the steamroller". In the circumstances where this Parliament is a constitutional poodle by comparison with other Parliaments in the western democratic world, it is essential that other means of having checks and balances are there.
	The leaking of information has a long and honourable precedent. Let me, for example, cite the official in the Secret Intelligence Service, called Desmond Morton, who briefed the then Back Bencher, Sir Winston Churchill, about the gathering threat of German rearmament. That was an essential part of the pressure put on the appeasement Governments of the day to take account of the threat to national security. So even matters of national security may, it seems to me, be justified as leaks to hold the Government to account.
	In this case, will the Home Secretary confirm that she was merely concerned about a potential breach of national security and that there were no actual breaches of national security? The elision in her answer was very clear to any Opposition Member, and she needs to clarify her position. She is also unclear in her statement whether Sir David Normington told her, after she was informed by the police, that there would be a search of the premises of an hon. Member and whether she was then concerned. If not, why not? Again, in her answer, she elides between the arrest and the search. Surely, if the police were informing her most senior official—I assume that her most senior official informed her—that, in fact, a search was impending, that should have been enough to ring alarm bells with the Home Secretary.
	Does the Home Secretary agree at the very least that the police action in this matter should cause us, as a House, as a Parliament and as a legislature, to reopen the issue of taking away responsibility for the security of the House from the Serjeant at Arms, since a clear principle is at stake? Does she now agree that the muddle in which she has landed herself in this case should be clarified, not least with a parliamentary privileges Bill—as recommended by a cross-party Committee nearly 10 years ago—a civil service Bill to ensure that our civil service is as impartial as it should be, and is always protected from undue political pressure, and a Bill to restore protection for whistleblowers who act in the public interest? We need to bring back the protections for whistleblowers that the Government and their predecessor abolished.

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman started off with an impassioned defence of leaking. I have argued—and I think that I have made it clear in my statement today—that I believe that the role of Members of this Parliament in using information that they gain access to, certainly in some of the circumstances to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, has happened, should happen and will continue to happen. That is an important element in the accountability of Government in this country. But it is also absolutely right that, if civil servants believe that the activity of their Government Department is unethical or improper, they should have a route through which they are able to take that issue up. That is why the Home Office has a clearly communicated whistleblower policy through which civil servants are able to raise issues of concern, including externally with the Civil Service Commissioner, and why this Government have put in place the Act covering the disclosure of public information referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, to give further protection to individuals in those circumstances.
	In this case, however, we were concerned about a potential systematic series of leaks. The original leak inquiries—which took place when it was not clear who was responsible, or whether it was one person or more than one—did involve, in the reference from the Cabinet Office, issues that related to national security, as of course does the work of the Home Office. For the hon. Gentleman to phrase his question as to whether we were "merely" concerned about a possible leak of national security, represents an underestimation of the significance of our role in safeguarding the information that we deal with.
	In relation to the hon. Gentleman's specific questions about action between search and arrest, I was not informed about the search of the hon. Member's office until after both the search and the arrest had taken place.

Keith Vaz: I thank the Home Secretary for her very full statement. Of course I accept that she was not informed of this circumstance until after it had occurred. The first telephone call appears to have been made to the Mayor of London, and the second to Sir David Normington. The Home Secretary was then informed. This is the second occasion on which she and the Mayor have taken a different view on the issue of policing in London and, in my view, this does not bode well for the imminent appointment of the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner. In respect of the two inquiries that have been set up so far—the Johnston inquiry and the inquiry that Mr. Speaker is setting up—and any other inquiries that Select Committees might want to set up, will my right hon. Friend give the House an undertaking that she, other Ministers and civil servants will be prepared to come and give evidence to those inquiries, and that there will be full co-operation so that all the facts of this matter can be brought before the House?

Jacqui Smith: I can certainly give my right hon. Friend an assurance that I will be perfectly willing, as I have been today, to give the fullest possible information—in a way, of course, that does not prejudice any investigation. I—and, I am sure, other Ministers—will be willing to give the fullest possible information. With respect to my right hon. Friend's concerns about the appointment of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, may I put on record—I believe that the Mayor shares this view—that we understand that this is an appointment of vital importance both for London and for the national interest, and that we will work closely to make sure that we get the best candidate for that extremely important job.

Kenneth Clarke: The Home Secretary has confirmed that she was the only Minister who authorised the involvement of what is usually called the special branch in the investigation of incidents of which she was the only victim and from which she had already suffered only political embarrassment. Can she tell the House whether she challenged or discussed that recommendation, and in particular what legal advice she sought about the matter being moved into the sphere of a criminal investigation? At what stage were the Law Officers asked for their opinion? At what stage was the Director of Public Prosecutions asked for his opinion? Did she obtain the advice of even Home Office lawyers?

Jacqui Smith: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is wrong. I did not authorise the investigation into the leaks and I did not say that I had. Completely appropriately, the Cabinet Office, which has responsibility—and, I suspect, probably did in his day as well—for the integrity of Government information, asked the police for assistance in the investigation, following a series of leak inquiries which had been inconclusive. I think that that was wholly appropriate. As I said in my statement, I agreed with the view of Sir David Normington that it was appropriate that the matter be referred to the Cabinet Office and that that then involved the police in the investigation. When there has been a process of internal leak inquiries and the use of external inquirers, and there is the serious issue of the systematic leaking of matters that could be extremely sensitive, it seems to me appropriate for Government to ask the police to help with those investigations. The only basis on which the police will carry out those investigations is if they suspect that a criminal investigation may be necessary.

John Reid: On the basis of the statement by the Home Secretary, I have no doubt at all about her integrity and truthfulness in this matter. It ill behoves Opposition Members to imply that there is a lack of either. I also accept the integrity and impartiality of the vast majority of civil servants who day in, day out serve Governments of all persuasions, despite their own personal opinions. That should be placed on the record. However, I would be wrong if I did not express some unease about two aspects of the matter. One is the fact that having been told—quite properly, in my view—that there was contact on this subject between one politician connected with the Metropolitan Police Service, the Mayor of London, and the person at the centre of the investigation, that must be looked at. Secondly, I am surprised, to say the least, that the Secretary of State for the Home Department was not informed that her opposite number, effectively, was about to be arrested. If I had been told after the event that that had been done, I cannot think that I would have remained as placid as she has in the circumstances. Notwithstanding the fact that she has said that even if she had been informed, she would not have acted differently, I do not think that we should take that as a ruling that someone in her position should never be informed. For my part, I would have wanted to be informed, and to express a view on the matter. I hope that she will look at those processes without prejudice.

Jacqui Smith: It is, of course, completely appropriate that the process of both the investigation and the information that was passed on should be part of questions and consideration after the police investigation. With respect to my right hon. Friend's first point, I believe the Metropolitan Police Authority and certain Members have already questioned what the Mayor knew, whom he chose to share that information with and whom he chose to communicate it to. It seems wholly appropriate for them to do that. On the second point, about whether and when I should have been informed, it is a matter for the Metropolitan police as to the point at which I was informed. I have made clear the questions that I asked after being informed. On the subject of placidity—I think that sometimes it behoves Home Secretaries to deal calmly with issues that are of significance, such as the present matter.

John Hemming: The Home Secretary may be interested to know that, following the Government's example of using the criminal law to persecute Opposition politicians for being too effective, the States of Jersey have initiated a criminal investigation into Senator Stuart Syvret, which should cause grave concern because of the situation in Jersey. Has the Home Secretary had any advice as to which elements of leaked information were covered by the Freedom of Information Act and the fact that the civil servant would have had a duty to reveal that information? Does she find it a little odd that one faces a criminal investigation for revealing certain information that one has a duty to reveal?

Jacqui Smith: Although the hon. Gentleman's point was very broad, covering a range of cases, I listened with interest. He made some important points, which I am sure people will want to return to, not least as part of the accounts that are being done here.

David Winnick: I entirely accept the integrity of my right hon. Friend. I do not question that in any way, and it is quite likely that the political points that the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was trying to make were matters with which I would hardly agree. Does my right hon. Friend accept that no one has suggested for one moment that MPs are above the law? Of course we are not above the law, but is there not a distinction between that and our role as Members of Parliament carrying out our parliamentary duties and being able to do so without fear or favour? If that is undermined, parliamentary democracy is undermined.

Jacqui Smith: I agree with my hon. Friend that both the principle of the important and significant role of Members of Parliament and the principle that nobody is above the rule of law need to be upheld in the present situation.

Michael Howard: Did the Home Secretary at any time give any indication to officials that she did not want to be kept informed of the progress of the investigation?

Jacqui Smith: No.

Andrew MacKinlay: A little while ago I had a hand in getting the Prime Minister to reaffirm the Wilson doctrine, and he extended it to modern electronic surveillance. On the face of it, it would appear that the Wilson doctrine has been abrogated by the police in this case. Clearly, the e-mails of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) were looked at. I venture to suggest that he was listened in to, and that there has been access to all our e-mails. Can the Home Secretary tell us whether the Wilson doctrine has been abrogated? Will she place in the Library the reply that she sends to the letter that I sent her two days ago on that specific point?

Jacqui Smith: I am sorry my hon. Friend has not received the reply to the letter, which I sent him yesterday and in which I made it clear that the Wilson doctrine as outlined by the Prime Minister has not been abrogated.

Peter Bottomley: On two of the occasions when I have talked to the commissioner or other senior police officers about operational matters, one shortly after the death of Stephen Lawrence and the other after the police had put an anti-terrorist team to search the home of Sergeant Gurpal Virdi, one of their own members, I did not find any objection from the police, and I did not think I was doing anything wrong, so I hope the Home Secretary will not be too delicate about discussing issues. It is a perfectly proper thing to do. Will she have a chance to read column 52 of yesterday's  Hansard, which shows the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change making a number of allegations and assertions about the civil servant involved, and tell the House whether she thinks that was proper, and whether it was prepared by someone on the Government Front Bench? Lastly, can she confirm that malfeasance in public office is not always a criminal offence?

Jacqui Smith: I have not read the passage to which the hon. Gentleman refers. The point about misconduct in public office is that it is potentially a criminal offence— [Interruption.] Well, that depends whether it has happened. As a common law offence, it is also a legitimate part of the criminal process of this country.

Gerald Kaufman: When my right hon. Friend was considering these issues, did she take into account such precedents as the prosecution and imprisonment by the Conservative Government of a woman civil servant for handing over details of Michael Heseltine's diary to  The Guardian, and the prosecution of Clive Ponting, when the Conservatives wanted to imprison him but he was acquitted on a public interest defence—which they immediately abolished, so that nobody else could have a public interest defence? In considering these issues, will my right hon. Friend take into account the synthetic indignation of the Conservatives, who seek one law for a Tory Government's iron heel and another law for a Labour Government?

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend is right, of course. When we talk about disclosure of information from Government, we are in areas of the utmost controversy that go to the heart of the nature of our democratic system and to the heart of the nature of the role of the civil service in this country.
	Although I did not consider those precedents in detail, I certainly thought about them and also about previous, extremely sensitive investigations into senior political figures. In some of those cases, I do not remember hearing the sort of outrage that we are hearing around this issue.

David Davis: If the issue was really a serious matter of national security, why were the arrests not carried out under the Official Secrets Act?

Jacqui Smith: The right hon. Gentleman is right that there have been circumstances under which issues of national security have resulted in the use of the Official Secrets Act. There have also been occasions on which the offence of misconduct in public office has been appropriate. Of course, there have not yet been any charges in this area and that is, of course, the responsibility of the police in terms of the evidence that they have. I made the point earlier to the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) that neither he nor I—nor the right hon. Gentleman—have seen the evidence to make the appropriate decisions on the investigation, and, with the involvement of the Crown Prosecution Service, on the nature of any charges, which may or may not emerge.

Patricia Hewitt: I believe that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and her permanent secretary have behaved absolutely appropriately on this occasion. May I bring her back to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which was raised by an Opposition Member? Does she agree that that Act—which was introduced by this Government, of course—has fundamentally changed the situation? It makes available to the House, the public and the media an immense amount of information that would never have been made available under any previous Government, whether Conservative or Labour. Furthermore, under that Act we have an independent Information Commissioner whose job it is to hold the balance between the public interest in disclosure and the public interest in good government, including confidential advice to Ministers. In those circumstances, is it not— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Lady has given me an opportunity to remind the House that there should be only one supplementary to the Home Secretary.

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend makes a very important point about the willingness of the Government to put in place, quite rightly and legitimately, the appropriate ways for members of the public and Members of the House—and civil servants, when necessary—to make information publicly available. I am thinking of the Freedom of Information Act, the whistleblowing processes that I outlined and the legislation that we have put in place to support whistleblowers. Given that record, my right hon. Friend is right that as a Government we have proved ourselves to be more open than any previous Government—and, incidentally, more open than any proposals put forward by Opposition Members.

David Howarth: Does the Home Secretary not accept that there is a vast difference between threatening to sack someone for breach of confidentiality and setting the criminal law attack dogs on them? Is she saying that because the Home Office deals with some matters of national security, any leak from the Home Office is now a criminal matter—even though we know that in this case no real matters of national security were at stake?

Jacqui Smith: Once again, I have to say that a Member is claiming a greater knowledge of the evidence than he can possibly have. When there has been systematic leaking and internal leak inquiries have not been able to discover its source, at a certain point I believe it appropriate to ask the police for their assistance in that investigation.

Adam Ingram: I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement and how she has conducted herself so calmly throughout this affair. Why should Her Majesty's loyal Opposition have thought it necessary to take legal advice on this matter? Does she share with me the view that perhaps, in their wish to see great transparency and openness, they should publish the brief that they gave to counsel and the legal advice that they obtained?

Jacqui Smith: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. What the Opposition do is not for the Home Secretary to account for.

Nicholas Winterton: Surely the Home Secretary will be aware that leading members of the Labour Governments since 1997 were expert and very successful in using leaked material during the last Conservative Government. In respect of a point made by the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), a former Home Secretary, is she not aware that she should have been informed by the police in a case involving a Member of this House? It is an exceptional situation. How many of the 20 leaks that she has mentioned involved national security?

Jacqui Smith: On the first point, about the use of information, I should say that today I have made absolutely clear my view that it always has been the case—and will remain so in future—that hon. Members and others who receive information should be able to use it in the public interest and that hon. Members should be able to carry out their role as Members of the House. However, I do not accept that that implies that there is no responsibility on the Government to investigate when leaks become systematic, happen in Departments that deal with some of the most sensitive issues, including national security, across Government, and risk undermining the principles of the impartiality of the civil service code.
	On the point about being informed, I think that I was clear in my response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid) that I was not, and that was a decision for the Metropolitan police.

Alan Keen: Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but I have been made to feel nauseous on so many occasions since this event broke. The statements made by people have often demonstrated their self-importance rather than tried to solve the problem. To be constructive, may I ask the Home Secretary whether the advice to Back Benchers of any political party should be that one telephone call from a civil servant on an issue of national security should be reported immediately to the security people, and one telephone call on an issue not of national security should lead to a fatherly or motherly talk to the individual—"Look sonny, don't do this. Go and get another job if you don't like it"?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend offers me the opportunity to give advice. Hon. Members are very aware of their responsibilities, with respect both to their own roles and to the impartiality of the civil service. That is how Members of this House should and do act.

Edward Leigh: Following the intervention from the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid)—the Home Secretary's distinguished predecessor who sits behind her and said that he would have liked to have been tipped off that his opposite number was about to be arrested—what lessons has the Home Secretary learned from this incident about the future? Does she think that in future it might be wise for the Home Secretary to be informed if an Opposition spokesman was about to be arrested for doing his job?

Jacqui Smith: What I have learned is that if we believe in the principle of the operational independence of policing, we should put that into practice, however difficult and tricky the circumstances.

Tony Lloyd: I want to comment on exactly that theme. Had my right hon. Friend been informed and attempted to interfere with that operational freedom, she would have faced legitimate demands for her resignation. Opposition Members—former Home Secretaries—have said that they would have interfered with police operational independence. My right hon. Friend has done exactly the right thing and will be supported by people throughout the country on that basis.

Jacqui Smith: I thank my hon. Friend for that. I think that it would have been wholly inappropriate for any Home Secretary to intervene in a police investigation in the way that some have tried to imply they would have done.

Roger Gale: The shadow Home Secretary asked the Home Secretary a number of questions that she failed to respond to. Let me try a couple of them again. First, did the police apply to a magistrate for a search warrant to enter the House of Commons? If not, why not? If they did, were they turned down? Secondly, is she personally satisfied that this operation was carried out under the terms of—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Jacqui Smith: On the first point—the only point—I have made it clear that I asked some of those questions yesterday evening. Bob Quick, the Assistant Commissioner, responded to me today, and I have placed that letter in the Library. [Hon. Members: "Answer!"]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I usually let a statement run for an hour, but if there are such levels of shouting I will cease the statement now. That is the danger that right hon. and hon. Members run. Shouting like that is not something that I will tolerate.

Nick Palmer: I share the fairly widespread concern about the allegations of, or suspicion of, criminal activity by an hon. Member and about the tendency of the police in recent years to take a more dramatic role in political controversy than we would wish. However, we are not considering one aspect, which is non-criminal. Does the Home Secretary agree that if any hon. Member seeks systematically to encourage a breach of the civil service code, regardless of whether it is criminal, it is a reason for shame?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is right. It is important for all political parties and for anybody who believes that they may, at some point, form the Government of this country, that we uphold the political impartiality of the civil service as set down in the civil service code. That is one of the four important principles that are brought into sharp relief in this situation.

Adam Price: Where does the literally unwarranted—apparently—intrusion into the parliamentary office of a Member of this House leave the whole concept of parliamentary privilege and the Bill of Rights, which is surely a fundamental part of our constitution? Will the Home Secretary issue guidance to the police that when a Member of this House is to be arrested in relation to his political activities as such, the advice of the Law Officers should be requested in order to see whether it constitutes a breach of parliamentary privilege?

Jacqui Smith: Mr. Speaker made very clear yesterday the situation with regard to parliamentary privilege. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 lays down the requirements for search and for arrest.

Clive Efford: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the position that she has been invited to adopt is that civil servants should be allowed to treat her Department as an Aladdin's cave of secrets that they should be free to leak, and that civil servants' judgment alone will determine what is in the public domain and what is not? Did the level at which these leaks came from her Department suggest to her that the person who leaked may have had access to information relating to national security? Can we be sure that all the leaks—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Jacqui Smith: There were concerns at a point at which it was unclear as to how many people were involved in leaking, but it was clear that there had been systematic leaking. That was, of course, the reason for asking the police to investigate. Some of the other issues that my hon. Friend raises should be left to be the subject of a police investigation. However, he is absolutely right in his suggestion that everybody in this House should be in a position of upholding the civil service code.

Andrew MacKay: Returning to the letter from Mr. Quick to the Home Secretary yesterday, relating to the lack of writ that was provided when the search took place of the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), there is a clear difference of opinion, or a major difference of fact, between what the Speaker said yesterday and what Mr. Quick said. Who does the Home Secretary believe? I know who I believe, and it ain't Mr. Quick.

Jacqui Smith: Unlike the right hon. Gentleman, I am not so quick to jump to judgment. That is why I believe that Ian Johnston's review, set up by Sir Paul Stephenson, and the ability of this House to consider the issue through Mr. Speaker's Committee, are both important.

Tom Levitt: I am sure that the whole House agrees that it is absolutely right that civil servants should hold political views, that they should join political parties, and that they should take part in legitimate political activity in their own time. However, in light of the fact that they need to behave in a professional manner at all times and to uphold the civil service code, and in light of what my right hon. Friend has called the "systematic leaking" of information, are there grounds for an inquiry to see whether there are any leaking Tory moles placed in other Government Departments?

Jacqui Smith: I do not think that that is an issue for me to comment on today.

John Maples: Prior to 1989, the Government could have used the Official Secrets Act in this case. The Home Secretary is sitting next to one of the world experts on the Official Secrets Act, who will be able to remind her that in 1989, almost exactly 20 years ago to this day, the then Conservative Government amended the Official Secrets Act to restrict the application of the criminal law to a very narrow band of Government information. It may surprise the Home Secretary to know that the whole Labour party, including the current and former Prime Minister, voted against that legislation on the grounds that it did not go far enough in liberalising the situation and still applied the criminal law to far too much information. As a result, the Government have had to dredge up an old common law offence to put the frighteners on officials, MPs and, presumably, journalists. If they want to criminalise information like this, why do they not amend the legislation by repealing the 1989 Act?

Jacqui Smith: The idea that the Government have dredged up the several circumstances in recent years when the offence of misconduct in public office has been used against public servants is just wrong. The decision on what offence is charged is, of course, for the police, alongside the Crown Prosecution Service. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees it would be wholly inappropriate in this situation for Ministers to offer an opinion about what any potential charges should be.

Mike Hall: With regard to the cash for honours investigation, the Leader of the Opposition said that it was right that these matters should be investigated and that the police and the CPS should make decisions about how to proceed. If that principle was right in that case, surely it should apply in this case, and should not be influenced by the contrived outrage of the Conservatives.

Jacqui Smith: I believe that that should be the principle in all cases.

Douglas Hogg: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, you told us two things in your statement: first, that there was not a warrant; and secondly, that the police failed to tell the Serjeant at Arms that she was entitled to refuse access. That was a breach of code B52 of the statutory codes. Furthermore, on any view, the Serjeant at Arms had no authority to allow access to the hon. Member's possessions. Consequently, the police were acting unlawfully in all three respects—no warrant, no statement that the Serjeant at Arms was entitled to refuse access, and, in any event, having access to material to which they were not entitled. When did the right hon. Lady first know that the police were guilty of such illegality?

Jacqui Smith: I think, frankly, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is confusing his role as a Member of this House with his presumably desired role as a member of the judiciary.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The House must calm down.

David Kidney: The police must be free to follow the evidence. However, our constituents sometimes complain to us that when they have been the subject of an investigation, the question arises as to whether the police's methods were proportionate to the seriousness of the criminality that is suspected. Sometimes we get the answer to that years or months later as the result of a trial; sometimes we get it as the result of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. At this early stage of this case, the only question to which I want to know the answer is whether the police had legal advice about the seriousness of the criminality that they suspected in order to make that judgment about proportionality before they made the decision to act. Does the Home Secretary know whether the police had legal advice?

Jacqui Smith: Sir Paul Stephenson has stated publicly the point at which the police consulted the CPS. Secondly, on the issue of proportionality, as I said, I welcome the fact that Sir Paul Stephenson is asking Ian Johnston to review the appropriateness and proportionality of the investigation.

John Redwood: Can the Home Secretary explain what was unique about this case that led them to want the police to be involved, when the police were not invited to investigate the systematic leaking of price-sensitive information about banks and bank capital, or to look into the extraordinary leaking of practically the whole pre-Budget statement, which was really a Budget? Surely that was systematic leaking on a grand scale. What was different about it?

Jacqui Smith: There have been other situations where the police have been asked by the Cabinet Office to help with investigations.

Parmjit Dhanda: The Home Secretary has been clear and unambiguous today. Will she go further on the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) about the Wilson doctrine? Can she reassure all hon. Members that our home numbers, work mobiles and the phones that we use in this House are covered by the Wilson doctrine, as well as our e-mail accounts?

Jacqui Smith: As I have suggested, the Wilson doctrine applies, and it applies as outlined by the Prime Minister.

Points of Order

Damian Green: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I invite the Home Secretary to correct a factual inaccuracy in her statement. She said that I was arrested "on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office." I have a copy of my arrest warrant here, and the phrase "counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office" does not occur. I was not arrested for counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office. She will understand the seriousness of her mistake, and I invite her to withdraw those words immediately.

Mr. Speaker: I ask the Home Secretary to reply.

Jacqui Smith: I would certainly be prepared to take that up with the Metropolitan police—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members should allow the Home Secretary to answer in the way that she wants to answer. It is not for me to tell the Home Secretary—or any other hon. Member—how she should answer. Home Secretary, have you anything to add?

Jacqui Smith: I was quoting from a public statement made by the Metropolitan police on 28 November.

Dominic Grieve: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In answer to one of the questions that was asked, namely whether an application had been made to a magistrates court for a warrant to come on to these premises, the Home Secretary replied that we should be referred to the letter of Mr. Quick, which she had placed in the Library. But the letter from Mr. Quick does not go into that in any way at all. Is it not a contempt of this House to be treated in this fashion?

Mr. Speaker: We are now extending the question session given to the Home Secretary.

Simon Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Can you confirm that the House has power, if necessary and on matters of national security, to go into private session, as it did during the war, for example, to be briefed by the Prime Minister? Secondly, given that we have heard a ruling from the European Court this morning which says that the retention of DNA samples is not legal, can you ask the Home Secretary before she begins her contribution to the following debate when she will announce the Government's response to that? That matter appears to be relevant to the case of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green).

Mr. Speaker: The second point is not a point of order. The hon. Gentleman can seek that information from the Home Secretary at any time through the various facilities we have. On his other point, the House can sit in private if it deems it necessary.

Michael Jack: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If it turns out, on investigation, that the Home Secretary used incorrect words in her statement, would it be in order for the official record of the House to be so corrected?

Mr. Speaker: It is up to the Home Secretary. The words and the statements that she makes are up to her.

Richard Benyon: Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) concerning our e-mails and the House of Commons server, Mr. Speaker. Can you confirm that the House of Commons server is covered by the Wilson doctrine, and that it cannot be accessed by the police or any other authorities to access our e-mails in order to investigate circumstances that we lawfully as Back Benchers and Members of this House have taken up on behalf of our constituents and others?

Mr. Speaker: As the Chairman of the House of Commons Commission, I have a serious responsibility to look after the computer system that we all use, including myself. I will look into this matter, rather than give an off-the-cuff answer from the Chair.

Gerald Howarth: Further to the point of order of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), Mr. Speaker. Given the unreliability of the information upon which the Home Secretary has relied today, how on earth can this House possibly give any credence to anything that the Home Secretary has said today in respect of the Metropolitan police?  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. So far there has been some excitement in the Chamber, but we have kept our comments temperate, and we should continue to do so.

Julian Lewis: On a temperate point of order, Mr. Speaker. Has the Home Secretary given you any notice that she intends to place in the Library of the House a list of the actual—not potential—leaks that led to the calling in of the police, so that Members will be able to see whether any of them involved national security, something that she has refused to tell us today?

Mr. Speaker: That is certainly not a point of order. It is a matter for the Home Secretary.

David Burrowes: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In line with your suggestion of temperate language, have you considered the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) about the intemperate language used by the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change when he, in effect, accused my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) of procuring a spy, giving information on political opponents and stealing confidential information?

Mr. Speaker: That is not point of order. There are times when I tell Ministers that they should be temperate in their language, but I make no comment on the point that has been raised.

Theresa May: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. With regard to the Speaker's Committee on the search of offices on the parliamentary estate, could you clarify the situation and perhaps give the Leader of the House an opportunity to retract her suggestion about who is able to choose the members of that Committee? Yesterday, in your statement, you said clearly that you would be setting up
	"a Committee of seven senior and experienced Members, nominated by me".—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 3.]
	In business questions earlier, the Leader of the House said also that she believed that you would be nominating that Committee, but the motion for Monday says that the seven Members appointed by the Speaker will be
	"reflecting the composition of the House".
	In other words, you and you alone will not be able to choose the Members. Our understanding is that the membership would be selected by you and you alone.

Mr. Speaker: I have expressed my wish, and I stand by my statement. The right hon. Lady may recall that one hon. Member did ask about the terms of the motion, and I made it perfectly clear that the rules of this House say that it is for the Government to put down the motion. All I can say to this House is that there is also a facility to put down amendments. I cannot go any further than that.

John Reid: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Following the point of order made by the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who asked the Home Secretary whether she would give a list of documents that have been leaked from the Department, I know from experience that by definition the only person who knows what has been leaked from that Department is the recipient of the leaked documents. Would you therefore urge anyone who has received anything that concerns national security to bring it before the whole House?

Mr. Speaker: I think that it is time to move on.

BILLS PRESENTED
	 — 
	Business Rate Supplements Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
	Secretary Hazel Blears, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Geoff Hoon, John Healey, Mr. Pat McFadden and Mr. Sadiq Khan, presented a Bill to confer power on the Greater London Authority and certain local authorities to impose a levy on non-domestic ratepayers to raise money for expenditure on projects expected to promote economic development, and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 8 December, and to be printed (Bi ll 2 ) with explanatory notes  (Bill  2 -EN).

Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
	Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary James Purnell, Mr. Secretary Woodward, Secretary Paul Murphy, Yvette Cooper, Secretary Jim Murphy, Mr. Stephen Timms, Angela Eagle and Ian Pearson, presented a Bill to make provision about Saving Gateway accounts; and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 8 December, and to be printed (Bill  3 ) with explanatory notes (Bill  3 -EN ).

Banking Bill

Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
	Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary David Miliband, Secretary Jack Straw, Secretary Jacqui Smith, Mr. Secretary Hutton, Yvette Cooper, Stephen Timms, Angela Eagle and Ian Pearson, presented a Bill to make provision about banking.
	 Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order (14 October)); to be read the Third time on Monday 8 December, and to be printed (Bill 6 ) with explanatory notes (Bill  6-EN ).

Political Parties and Elections Bill

Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
	Mr. Secretary Straw, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Hazel Blears, Edward Miliband and Michael Wills, presented a Bill to make provision in connection with the Electoral Commission; and to make provision about political donations and expenditure and about elections and electoral registration.
	 Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order (20 October)); to be considered on Monday 8 December, and to be printed (Bill 4 ) with explanatory notes (Bill  4- EN).

Corporation Tax Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
	Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary James Purnell, Yvette Cooper, Mr. Stephen Timms, Mr. Gareth Thomas, Angela Eagle and Ian Pearson, presented a Bill to restate, with minor changes, certain enactments relating to corporation tax; and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 8 December, and to be printed (Bill  1 ) with explanatory notes (Bill  1 - EN).

Debate on the Address
	 — 
	[2nd day]

Debate resumed (Order, 3 December)
	 Question again proposed,
	That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
	Most Gracious Sovereign,
	We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament

Home Affairs and Justice

Jacqui Smith: It is a great privilege to open the debate on the Gracious Speech.
	Yesterday, the Gracious Speech made clear our commitment to supporting families and businesses through difficult economic times. Today's debate builds on that commitment to economic security with plans to strengthen security in our neighbourhoods and on our borders, and the ties that bind our communities.
	With families working harder and more demands being placed on public resources, fair rules are essential to ensure that everyone is playing their part. Fair rules make for strong communities. That means supporting those who play by the rules, standing shoulder to shoulder with communities and giving them a fair say in setting the rules, and ensuring that those who do not play by the rules are punished in a way that reinforces public confidence.
	The measures that we are introducing in the Session build on the solid foundations that we have laid since 1997. Crime is down by nearly 40 per cent., with burglary and car crime more than halved. The likelihood of being a victim of crime is lower now than at any time in more than 25 years.
	The Government have taken tough and determined action to nip antisocial behaviour in the bud and turn the tables on the small minority of persistent offenders who try to make life a misery for the law-abiding majority in our communities.

Dominic Grieve: I am listening carefully to the Home Secretary. May we consider violent crime? The briefing document that was supplied to Ministers—I believe that it is one of the other leaks in this place—acknowledged that violent crime was increasing, whereas the Government previously claimed that it was decreasing. Will she clarify the position?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows from the British crime survey and the recorded crime figures that violent crime has decreased in the past year. That demonstrates the tremendous job that the police and their partners do across the country. We have delivered neighbourhood policing in every neighbourhood throughout England and Wales. By the end of the year, we will deliver a policing pledge in every force—a new deal between the police and the public, setting out for the first time the standards of service that people can expect their force to meet.
	Alongside the pledge, there will be greater accountability to local communities through crime mapping and regular information updates, and through monthly opportunities for people to help set local priorities for local action.

Lembit �pik: I am listening to the Home Secretary with interest. Switzerland has made an interesting departure from convention by voting to provide hard drug users with their drug on prescription. Is she willing to hold a dialogue with organisations that believe, through analysing the motivations for the Swiss vote, that that could be a method of significantly reducing crime in this country? Will she consider running similar pilot schemes in the United Kingdom to break the link between crime and drug addiction?

Jacqui Smith: We have already made considerable progress on breaking the link between crime and drug addiction by doubling the number of people in treatment. There has been a 22 per cent. reduction in acquisitive crime. We set out in the next 10-year drug strategy, which we published earlier this year, how we want treatment to develop. I believe that some prescribing pilots are already under way and we will want to evaluate and examine them carefully.
	As well as the greater accountability to local people that I described, we will also introduce greater accountability to local elected representatives through the councillor call for action, which will be in place from next April. We will provide a strengthened and reformed role for police authorities through inspection and improved training and skills for their members.
	Community crime fighters will be in each neighbourhood, helping local people get their say and giving our clear backing to people who want to get involved in tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.

Andrew Turner: If the police look for things on any site, they have to explain to the owner that they either need a warrant or that the owner must be satisfied with a written explanation, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 or other legislation. Are they the only two routes or is there a third?

Jacqui Smith: I think that I made it clear that the legal basis for such searches is outlined in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Given that we spent an hour and a quarter on the matter through the statement, it is disappointing that Conservative Members do not want to consider issues about crime, justice and immigration that seriously concern our constituents.

Tobias Ellwood: May I take the Home Secretary back to the statistics with which she started? She knows that there has been an increase of about 22 per cent. in violent crime between 3 am and 6 am. That puts huge strain on our police forces. What will she do about it? Is it time to review the Licensing Act 2003?

Jacqui Smith: The review of the Licensing Act that the Government carried out showed that the incidence of violent crime remained unchanged on the whole. Alcohol-related violent crime has decreased, but I will deal later with the action that we should and will take on binge drinking.

Simon Hughes: In earlier debates, the Home Secretary said that she is keen for the police to build on their good community work by being responsive at all times to people who ask them for assistance. Will she report back on whether she has been able to take action to ensure that that happens? Not hearing back from the police causes a genuine problem with public confidence. Has she or her colleagues in other Departments considered whether, in supplementing the police in communities, more money and support could be provided for detached youth workers to assist with the problems that she experiences in her constituency, as I do in mine, so that those who are on young people's side work with them, rather than those who are sometimes perceived to be against them?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes two important points. I wholeheartedly agree that local people need and deserve to know the response that they can expect from the police. It needs to be a good response. That, with the agreement of the Association of Chief Police Officers, is set out in the pledge that chief constables have committed to delivering everywhere by the end of the year. It is important to find methods of ensuring that local people are clear about what they can expect because that will help build confidence.
	I agree with the hon. Gentleman about detached youth workers. That is why support for such youth work is an important part of the 100 million overall investment that went into the youth crime action plan. We are now in the process of distributing the money so that it can be spent and such services can be developed.

Mark Field: It is fairly fruitless to bandy statistics about, as we have tried to impress upon the Home Secretary, although I entirely endorse what she says about neighbourhood policing. The scheme in my constituency, which works with the local authority, has been something of a success. She referred earlier to accountability. Given her passion for accountability, and no doubt for giving more power to a much more galvanised local electorate, what does she believe is the way forward for directly elected police commissioners, for example? Is this going to be part and parcel of the Bill that she is bringing forward, and what are her general thoughts on this matter?

Jacqui Smith: No I do not think that, and I have made it clear that I think that there should be an abolition of the police authority and a single directly elected police commissioner. That is what I have made clear previously and I still hold to that position.

Henry Bellingham: The Home Secretary mentioned accountability and more local involvement. Is she satisfied with the current arrangements for appointing commissioners to the Metropolitan police and, in particular, with the upcoming appointment?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I am satisfied with the current arrangements for the appointment of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
	All the measures that I have outlined are designed to build public confidence in the fight against crime and are matched by concrete achievements in freeing up the police to ensure that they can focus on the issues that matter to people. We are removing all but one target set from Whitehall, in order to deliver improved levels of public confidence, scrapping the stop and account form and streamlining the process of crime recording for police forces. We are providing the police with the tools that they need to do their job, with 10,000 handheld devices in the past year and 20,000 more to come over the next 18 months.

Keith Vaz: I warmly welcome the Home Secretary's announcement today, which is very much in line with recommendations that we in the Select Committee on Home Affairs made in our report Policing in the 21st Century. However, we recommended that every police officer should have a handheld computer. It is not sufficient for some forces to have the facility and for others not to. Also, the devices should be compatible, so that Lincolnshire can talk to Leicestershire without using a different system, which is one of the problems that our police forces have encountered.

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend's Committee produced a good and important report. If he looks at the speed with which we have funded and developed the ability of police forces throughout the country to have handheld devices, he will see that I share his ambition to roll out this important system quickly. He also makes an important point about compatibility. I will talk later about ensuring better collaboration among police forces. The National Policing Improvement Agency is currently leading work to ensure greater compatibility not just between handheld devices, but among all the information systems across police forces, which I certainly agree with my right hon. Friend is important.
	Just as police forces must look to their neighbourhoods, so they must also look to each other to collaborate where needed to tackle crime at all levels and to ensure the best use of resources. We will legislate to strengthen the provisions for collaboration, whether in the back office or on the front line of operations. We will also give the police, other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors additional powers to improve the recovery of criminal assets, because criminals should not be able to squirrel away their ill-gotten gains. I make no apology for doing all that I can to ensure that they get the message loud and clear that they should not profit from their criminal activities.

Shailesh Vara: On the subject of collaboration, I am sure that the Home Secretary will agree that there is no place in a civilised society for the vile practice of human trafficking. I very much appreciate what is being done in our country to stamp out that evil practice, but what co-operation is she receiving from her counterparts in the countries from which those sad individuals come?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I will say something about human trafficking later, but his point about international co-operation is crucial. For example, we are currently working with other countries in the European Union, as part of the EU's action programme on countering trafficking, precisely to address some of the issues that he has raised.
	It is central to delivering confidence that justice is done and that it is seen to be done. I want people to know that we are 100 per cent. behind them when they stand up to gangs, drug pushers or other criminals. The provisions in the coroners and justice Bill, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor will have more to say about later, reinforce that point. There will be a further opportunity to debate the new scheme for protecting the identity of vulnerable witnesses at trial. We will also extend those provisions to the earlier, pre-trial stages of an investigation, so that we can protect witnesses in gang-related murder cases.
	The policing and crime Bill will also establish the fair rules that prevent low-level crime and disorder from taking root in our communities. It will introduce measures to tackle binge drinking and set the framework for a new mandatory code for responsible alcohol sales. Most people, even in the House, know how to enjoy alcohol responsibly. Alcohol-related violent crime has fallen, but there is a minority of people who run out of control and ruin things for others. We will give the police the powers that they need to tackle the crime and disorder that stems from excessive drinking. We will take tougher action against retailers and bars that sell alcohol to children and ensure that the industry plays its part in ending irresponsible promotions such as all you can drink offers.

Keith Vaz: I thank the Home Secretary for giving way a second time. What she has announced is excellent news, given the recommendations that we in the Home Affairs Committee made in our report. However, the supermarkets are still selling alcohol too cheaply. Will her measures include a floor price below which supermarkets will not sell alcohol? If we address one sectorthe pubs and clubsbut do not deal with the supermarkets, which are selling alcohol as a loss leader, we will not solve the problem of alcohol-related crime.

Jacqui Smith: I do not want this debate to become a love-in

Keith Vaz: It will not become a love-in.

Jacqui Smith: Nosome hope.
	My right hon. Friend's Committee made some important points and pressed us on precisely those alcohol-related issues. It is of course the case that responsible promotions willfor example, through their impact on all licensees, in both the on trade and the off tradeimpact on price. However, having asked the university of Sheffield to conduct research into minimum pricingwhich my right hon. Friend drew attention towe now have some very useful evidence. Given the current economic climate, it is important that we do more work and think carefully about how and whether that work would make an impact on the harm that we would want it to impact upon, but in a way that did not disproportionately affect others. However, the issue is certainly a live one, as my right hon. Friend pointed out.

Dominic Grieve: May I turn to 24-hour licensing? The Home Secretary knows that our party believes that the decision to introduce it was a mistake. There were some reports in the press that there might be changes to the conditions and greater local discretion. Can she tell the House about that and whether the Government intend to move in our direction?

Jacqui Smith: The element that I am outlining with respect to a mandatory code would enable specific conditions to relate to all licensed establishments, as well as providing for probably a larger number of provisions, which could be applied locally to more than one establishment, which, incidentally, would cut some of the bureaucracy involved in the Licensing Act 2003.

Tobias Ellwood: The Home Secretary is being extremely generous in giving way. On responsible drinking, she will be aware that traditional pubs take their duties seriously, but unfortunately 36 are shutting every week. Fortunately, VAT is decreasing, but duties are increasing to compensate and when VAT increases again, duties will remain where they are. How does that help traditional pubs to continue with responsible drinking? Also, on the supermarkets, when the Government came into power, the cost of a pint of beer in a pub was twice what it was in a supermarket. Today, a pint in a pub costs seven times what it costs in a supermarket. The Government surely need to look into that.

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice is advising me on the price of beer, on which I have to confess I am not an expert. I am not going enter into future decisions about tax levels, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to.
	Strong and safe communities need local people to be given a fair say in the rules that we all live by. My hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods), for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) and for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) have argued that case very strongly with respect to lap-dancing clubs. We will tighten the controls on lap-dancing clubs, giving local people a greater say in whether those clubs should be allowed to operate in their neighbourhood.

Andrew Slaughter: I am grateful for the Home Secretary's intention to assert more control over lap-dancing clubs, the expansion of which into residential areas is of great concern to many communities, including mine.  [Interruption.] I would like to speak without being heckled by the Opposition Front-Bench team. When will my right hon. Friend provide more details of what the legislation will say? In particular, is she going to use the definition of sex encounter establishments and what will happen to existing licences and those that may be granted during the transitional phases before the policing and crime Bill becomes law?

Jacqui Smith: I reiterate the point that my hon. Friend has been assiduous in campaigning on behalf of his constituents on this issue. We intend to spell out in the policing and crime Bill how we will define these clubs and how we will provide local people with the opportunity to have their say. The Bill will impact, in response to my hon. Friend's final question, on new establishments and it will provide for what I hope will be reasonably regular reviews of the licensing of existing clubs.
	The policing and crime Bill will set out new protections for vulnerable groups, particularly women and children, by tackling demand for prostitution and strengthening existing arrangements to deal with sex offenders. Although we do not always agree on the detail, I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for her campaigning on this issue. I want to make sure that people think twice before they pay for sex, especially if it is with a victim of trafficking or someone forced into prostitution against their will and for another's gain. This month, with particular respect to trafficking, the UK will formally ratify the Council of Europe's convention on human traffickinga spur for every state around the world to renew their efforts to tackle the evil trade in human misery.
	We know the importance of having a strong border to stop traffickers, to disrupt smuggling and to clamp down on illegal immigration. Our borders are already among the most secure in the world and the numbers charged with protecting them are at an all-time high, but we are determined to make the border even stronger as we take forward the biggest overhaul of the immigration system in a generation. We are already issuing biometric visas as a matter of course to anyone applying to travel here. We are reintroducing border controls and exit checks and will soon be able to count non-European economic area nationals in and out of the UK.

David Davis: The Home Secretary may be surprised to know that this is intended to be a helpful intervention for her. There have been some stories in the press and on the radio this morning that the Government intend to insist on checks within country, requiring people to carry these ID cards in country so that the police can check them. Will she please scotch those rumours right now?

Jacqui Smith: My first reaction was that when I need the right hon. Gentleman's help, I know that I am in really big trouble! However, he has been helpful and I am extremely happy to scotch the rumours, as he puts it, because the intention is to enable identity checks only at the border. I am sure that we will have future opportunities to make that even clearer than we have up to this point.

Simon Hughes: These are important matters and Liberal Democrats have always argued that we need a proper and clear immigration policy and proper controls. However, I do not understand why we need further legislation on matters that it seems to me could easily have been in the previous Bill, if not in the one before that. I still fail to see any common border force, which we have argued for, integrating the police, immigration and customs into one force at all our airports and seaports. Why are we not moving towards that rather than playing around and tinkering once againfor the third year in a row, I believe?

Jacqui Smith: I am just coming on to explain what is in the Bill and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that it is very far from tinkering; it is, in fact, a means of bringing about and making stick the largest reform in immigrationboth at the border and in countryfor many years. The border, immigration and citizenship Bill will give UK Border Agency officers the integrated immigration and customs powers that they need to deliver even greater protections at our borders. It is right that we have tough systems in place to ensure that people who come here have a right to do so and it is right to have tough but fair rules in place to make sure that only those with the skills we need can come here to work or study.
	Last week, tiers 2 and 5 of the points-based system were introduced, allowing us to control immigration by raising and lowering the bar depending on the needs of the economy and the country as a whole. Last week, too, we issued the first ID cards for foreign nationalsopposed by Opposition Membersto protect against identity fraud and illegal working, as well as to make it easier for people to prove that they are who they say they are.
	The Bill also sets out plans for major changes to what we expect of migrants before they can earn British citizenship. British citizenship, is a privilege. There will no longer be an automatic right to stay here after five years. From now on, newcomers will have to speak English, work hard and play by the rules if they want to stay and build a new life in Britain. As the Bill introduces those new responsibilities, we will also create a new duty for the UK Border Agency to take into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in its operations.

Fiona Mactaggart: I really welcome the duty to safeguard the welfare of children, but will it have any impact on the detention of children?

Jacqui Smith: The duty clearly relates to the detention of children. We are already working to ensure that the detention of children takes place only in extremely specific circumstances, usually when the detention of the child alongside the family for a few days prior to deportation is probably the most important way to keep the family together. Sometimes the detention is just overnight, simply to identify whether someone is a child in cases where there is some uncertainty about it. I agree with my hon. Friend that more work needs to be done and we will undertake it to ensure that children's interests are served, while also ensuring the interests of the country and maintaining the integrity of our immigration system.
	The measures we are bringing forward, together with our commitment to strong enforcement of the law, including the doubling of the UK Border Agency's enforcement budget over three years, will deliver an immigration system that is fair but firm.

Ann Cryer: I have heard all sorts of stories over the last 12 months about people who are effectively buying certificates to demonstrate their knowledge of English, so I am wondering whether my right hon. Friend is satisfied that the people getting either indefinite leave to remain or citizenship who need English are actually acquiring the English language rather than just paying someone for a certificate to demonstrate the fact.

Jacqui Smith: We certainly believe that the requirements for English and, of course, knowledge of life should be robust. Where allegations have been brought to our attention, we have investigated them. If my hon. Friend is concerned that the problem has become more systemic, I would be willing to look into it in further detail and to raise it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
	As I said in my opening remarks, the motivating principle for these measures is that the law must be on the side of those who do the right thing and those who need the most protection. Just as important as the principle are the clear steps that I have set out today, which we are taking in those Bills to put principles into practice. The measures demonstrate again the Government's commitment to protecting the rights of the most vulnerable and the interests of the law-abiding majority, and I commend them to the House.

Dominic Grieve: I listened with care to what the Home Secretary had to say and I am sorry that she sat down before I could ask her about an issue of some importance, which dovetails with the responsibilities of the Foreign and Commonwealth Officethat of piracy. I hope that we might hear something about it today. Piracy concerns an issue of law and order, and before moving on to the main part of my speech I must say that I have been increasingly mystified as to our apparent inability to take action when the law as I have always understood it, albeit rather ancient, is very clear.

Tobias Ellwood: There is confusion in the Navy and other parts of the armed forces as to where we stand with regard to piracy.

Jack Straw: We are against it!

Tobias Ellwood: The Secretary of State shouts that the Government are against it, but perhaps that needs to be made clear to those who are doing their duty off the coast of Somalia, because they do not know what this Government really think. They do not know whether they are breaking the law if they arrest or indeed shoot somebody; nor do they know whether the person concerned will ask for asylum as soon as the arrest is made. That needs to be clear and it should not be a laughing matter for Government Front Benchers to giggle about.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. There is a need for clarification both of the law and our ability to prosecute pirates in this country, which is easy and perfectly clear-cut, and of the puzzlement that we seem to be confined to a policy of self-defence. My understanding of the state of the law is that it ought to be possible to take proactive steps to suppress piracy within international law. I very much hope that we will hear more about that.
	On the substance of what the Home Secretary had to say, although I can welcome some aspects of her speech, there are many others that I cannot, because the Government's record on home affairs and justice is not a happy one and is at variance with the aspirations set out in the Queen's Speech.
	The Government have presided over the virtual doubling of violent crime since they were elected, while their incessant red tape and regulation have tied the hands of the police. Indeed, some announcements that are now being made on the subject are merely rolling back red tape and bureaucracy that the Government previously introduced.
	The Government's open-door immigration policy has led to a fivefold increase in immigrationstraining public services, exacerbating community tensions and allowing drugs, guns and criminal gangs to flow with far too much ease into this country.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. and learned Gentleman talks about the doubling of crime. He is right that recorded violent crime has doubledhis figures are correct in that respectbut when the Conservatives were in government they repeatedly said, as this Government say, that the British crime survey figures were better. Does he accept that that is contradictory and that a rather different picture is shown? What is his view on whether the British crime survey or the recorded crime figures is the more accurate in this respect?

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. One problem at the moment is that there does not seem to be much confidence in either set of statistics. As a result, we have been calling repeatedly for independent statistical collation. That would be helpful.
	Also, some maturity in the debate would be valuable. If we are considering crime rates merely on the basis of what has happened in the past six or 12 months, we might well be missing the point. We have to look at overall trends. I am the first to accept that on overall trends crime has been rising for a long time. That makes me suspicious when I hear the Government trumpeting that crime is going down. There are lots of mixed messages.
	I am quite satisfied that the Government's own assessment is that violent crime is a growing problem. It was quite apparent from the internal briefing document for Ministerswe come back to these leaksthat the Home Office saw it as a priority issue, because it was a rising trend that showed no signs of diminishing. That undermines some of the assertions that have been made.
	Beyond that, I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). It would be sensible to have some proper statistics and sensible in debate if all of usI put that as a self-denying ordinance to myself as welltried to take an overall view, rather than just jumping up and down about immediate statistics. That is for the Government to do as much as anyone else.

Jack Straw: I would like to follow up, if I may, the point made by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). The Conservative party was clear in government. I have here its campaign guide for 1994, which says [Interruption.] It is out of date to this extent: that was when the Conservatives were in government. That is the whole point. When the Conservatives were in government, they consistently said, and it is repeated here in the guide, that the BCS endeavours to build up an accurate picture of the number of crimes actually committed, and that the BCS showed that while recorded crime had doubled between 1981 and 1991, it also showed that the actual number of crimes committed rose by only 50 per cent. in that period. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman not accept, as the BCS was established by the Conservative party, that it is independently verified by the independent statistics authority, which was set up by the House, and that that is the best measure of consistent trends over time?

Dominic Grieve: I am afraid that I do not share the right hon. Gentleman's view with the certainty that he puts forward. I am perfectly prepared to accept the BCS as a helpful indicator, but for the reasons that I have already given I take the view that all statistics should be approached with caution. We also need to review how all the statistical information is collated.

Andrew Murrison: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the acid test is what we hear as Members of Parliament, particularly in our weekly advice surgeries? Most residents seem to think that crime is going up, which rather confounds the statistics that are being bandied about. Is not that all the more remarkable given the fact that we live in an increasingly surveyed society, with more than 600 public bodies now able to intrude on e-mails, telephone calls and all the rest of it? If that was working, surely we would expect improved crime figures rather than the ones we see, which are being reported to us by our constituents.

Dominic Grieve: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Indeed, he will be aware that Louise Casey, who produced a report for the Government, indicated quite clearly that the public had no confidence in the statistics that were being produced. In fairness to the Government, they appear to be willing to consider that issue, and they jolly well should. My overall impressionI can give it only of my own constituencyis that violent crime and antisocial behaviour continue to get worse. Some categories of crime have gone down in recent years in my constituency, although they have shown some signs of going up againburglary, for example.
	The picture is very mixed, but there are examples from the past, which I think the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor would accept, of proper targeting of crimesuch as was done in respect of burglary by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) when he was Home Secretaryachieving substantial reductions. However, sustaining that can be very difficult.

Jack Straw: We have done that.

Dominic Grieve: The Secretary of State says that the Government have done that, but I come back to where I started: in the category of violent crime, I do not see the improvements that the Government have been talking about .

Jack Straw: So far as burglary is concerned, one target that I slightly reluctantly accepted; in fact, I was invited to accept it by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair

Tobias Ellwood: It was his fault.

Jack Straw: No, he was right. My hesitation was not entirely justified as it turned out on that occasion. It was a substantial target of a 30 per cent. reduction in burglary from about 1998 onwards. In fact, that has been far exceeded on any measure.

Dominic Grieve: I note what the Secretary of State says, but I stand by my comments, particularly in respect of violent crime. I must now make progress.
	When it comes to defending our security, the Government have consistently opted for rhetoric over action and headlines over effectiveness. We have had, and we continue to face, proposals to extend detention without charge to 42 days, despite their being roundly rubbished as unjustified, unnecessary and unworkable by security experts and Members across the House and the other place. It still persists, however, as a sort of fig leaf for the Government's previous climbdown, which was forced on them because they entirely lost the arguments over the issue. The Home Secretary is introducing ID cardsat a cost that we believe, on an independent assessment, could rise as high as 19 billion at the worst of economic timesthat will be incapable of stopping terrorists, illegal immigration or benefit fraud.
	We are developing a database state and hoarding an increasing volume of data on our citizens, but the Prime Minister readily admits that he cannot promise that every single item of information will always be safe, which, on the record of the past year, is a gross understatement. There are real fears that Britain is turning into a surveillance society, with local councils stretching powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to monitor dustbins and dog fouling and to trail children home from school to check their catchment areas.
	The thirst for headlines and the inflation of ineffective bureaucracy and legislative hyperactivity distract the Government and successive Home Secretaries from the real job at hand: getting more police on the street with the single imperative of cutting crime, and a dedicated border police force to reverse our current vulnerability, which has seen the street value of cocaine and heroin slashed by almost half, while estimates show that the numbers of young women and girls trafficked into prostitution have quadrupled.
	I should say at this point that I entirely welcome the fact that the Government have signed the Council of Europe protocol on human trafficking. I am also delighted that they moved on this matter after we indicated to them very firmly that they should and that they would have our full support when they did so. I am slightly distressed by the fact that it has still taken quite a long time between that assurance being given to the Government and the piece of paper actually being signed.
	We also believe that we need practical measures such as lifting the ban on using intercept evidence in court to prosecute terrorists to protect lives while protecting our way of life and preserving our liberty and our shared democracy. I am afraid that the consequences of the failures of the Government are plain at present. The Government are in fact very short of ideas, as is quite clear from a reading of the relevant sections of the Queen's Speech. They are scrambling to find answers to problems that are of their making and papering over cracks from 11 years of failure.
	The proposals presented by the Home Secretary in the policing and crime Bill are particularly disappointing given the serious problems that Britain now faces. I know that Home Office officials do not always feel it necessary to keep the Home Secretary updated on what is going on, as we have discovered today, but does she accept the advice of Sir David Normington? I put this to her rather than to the Secretary of State for Justice. She claims that violence has dropped by 40 per cent. since 1997, which is contrary to Sir David's statement that recorded crime statistics indicate that levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were 10 years ago. I hope that we can get a response later from the Secretary of State for Justice on that. Is Sir David wrong? He and the Home Secretary cannot both be right.
	The Flanagan report on police bureaucracy set out a whole series of ministerial failures: perverse incentives given to the police in the way in which they handle crime reporting; a raft of targets; and officers straitjacketed by processthe entire product of Labour's effort over the last 11 years to use the criminal justice legislation to achieve those targets. The consequences for the police have been dire, as the Home Secretary is now being obliged gradually to admit.
	The Home Secretary has not listened, which is why the police, despite all her promises, spend more time filling in forms than out on patrol. She has become obsessed by making political noise and neglecting to take sound advice. As a result, a glaring omission from the policing and crime Bill is serious and concerted action to deliver on all those bold pledges to release officers from the burden of forms, targets and red tape.
	It is left to the Conservatives to provide a serious alternative for police reform: cutting the stop and account and stop and search forms; removing the bureaucratic hoops to allow police officers to charge in less serious cases; saving 1 million police hours per year; slashing the targets, which as Sir David Normington noted, have distracted officers from dealing with the most serious crime; and consolidating the excess audit that led one police force to face 15 separate inspections in a year.
	The only substantive proposal for police reform in this rag-bag of measures is the proposal for elected crime and policing representatives to sit on existing police authorities. That looks to me a half-baked ideaa pale imitation of our proposal for elected police commissioners who would be responsible for local policing, directly accountable to the communities they serve and taking over the functions of police authorities. As I speak to senior police officers, it becomes apparent that there are serious concerns that the elected representatives are far more likely to lead to politicisation [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must not have sedentary interventions. They are quite disruptive to the debate.

Dominic Grieve: If the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, wants to intervene, I shall be happy to take an intervention.

Christopher Huhne: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Dominic Grieve: I give way.

Christopher Huhne: I find the growing consensus on both sides of the House on the need for some directly elected police authorities to be very welcome. However, I am worried about the Conservative party proposal for a sheriff, particularly in areas such as the west midlands, London, Merseyside and Greater Manchester with complex and diverse communities and substantial ethnic minorities. Is the hon. and learned Gentleman confident that his proposal can be sensitive enough to the needs of those communities, or will we see a repeat of the sort of policing that we had, and thought we had left behind at the beginning of the 1980s, which the last Conservative Government had to get out of?

Dominic Grieve: First, our proposals do not touch on London, precisely because an existing arrangement in respect of the Mayor is bedding in. Outside London, we believe that our proposals will be markedly better than what the Government are putting forward. The size of the police areas with which we are dealing would mean that it is most unlikely that a directly elected police commissioner would be hijacked by any single interest group. The problem I have with the Home Secretary's proposalsalthough we have yet to see the detailis that a system by which we have directly elected members of the police authority who are also, as I understand it, to be chairing the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in the areas that they represent strikes me as much more susceptible to the very politicisation that our proposals are designed to avoid.
	I hope that we will have an opportunity for a reasoned debate on that issue, because I am always prepared to listen to the Home Secretary but its strikes me that the Government's system is much more likely to create the problems that the Home Secretary is raising her eyebrows about than our proposals. In due course I will seek to persuade the Home Secretary, and doubtless the hon. Member for Eastleigh, that the ideas that we are developingI accept that they are not fully finished in their detailwill offer a much better model than what the Home Secretary has in mind.
	We share a common aspiration, which is to improve local accountability. My fear is that I do not think local accountability will be improved. I think that there is a much greater risk that single-issue politics may intrude, which the Home Secretary and I share a desire to avoid at all cost. Subject to that, I will listen carefully to the Home Secretary, but it would be wrong of me not to highlight my concerns about this aspect of the policy.
	One cannot be in favour both of increasing centralised Government control and of handing back accountability to local communities; that is the other point I would make. The Government still think that they can direct policing better than the police and still think that they know local priorities better than local communities. Our policy will be to release forces from the iron grip of Whitehall and to vest real control over law and order at a local level.
	May I turn to what has been said about trying to take action to seize the assets of the Mr. Bigs in the criminal underworld? It is a laudable aim, but one is bound to make the following point to the Government. They set up the Assets Recovery Agency in 2003, vowing to put the fear of God into criminal gangs living the high life from the proceeds of crime. It cost 65 million to set it up, but it managed to recoup a mere third of that in criminal assets. In fact, it failed abysmally. The Government swept it into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, but that agency's record is equally poor, missing by a wide margin each of the targets set by Ministers for forfeitures, confiscation and restraint orders. So now the Government are yet again proposing to create new law to try to address basic failures in law enforcement.
	We have already touched on the issue of 24-hour licensing. We believe that a large part of the binge-drinking problem comes from the introduction of that reckless policy. The Government announced a tough crackdown on retailers, pubs and clubs, and Ministers are right to be concerned. Last year there were 1 million victims of alcohol-related attacks. Alcohol-related admissions to accident and emergency wards are up by a quarter, and 24-hour drinking has resulted in a 25 per cent. increase in late-night violence. These are appalling statistics, and the Home Secretary would do well to take account of them.
	We have for months been calling on the Government to reverse the 24-hour drinking policy and to replace it with local authority control over licensing. We have also called for a ban on loss-leader alcohol sales, and I am glad that there appears to be some movement on that. A rise in tax on high-strength lagers, beers, ciders and alcopops would enable us to lower tax on lower alcohol drinks associated with responsible drinking. We will look carefully at the Government's review of happy hours and promotions, but on its own that is an inadequate response to the social problems that antisocial and binge drinking are causing.
	We will also take a constructive look at the Government's proposals to create new criminal offences relating to prostitution and to tighten controls around lap-dancing clubs. I share the Home Secretary's wish for decisive action to be taken against those profiting from prostitution and human trafficking. Why, however, has she cut the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit, which was the most effective such unit in the country, and why have convictions for trafficking for sexual exploitation halved in the last year from what was an already low and declining rate?  [Interruption.] Do Labour Front Benchers wish to intervene? A private conversation is taking place, but I am happy to give way. The current much-hyped proposals will do nothing to provide the unequivocal signal that we need to send to those engaged in human trafficking that they will not go unpunished.
	We now have the seventh immigration Bill since the Government came into office. That is the surest admission that they keep getting it wrong, but we will look carefully at their new powers for the UK Border Agency, and I was very pleased to hear today the unequivocal commitment that they will not require individuals to prove at random and without cause their identity just because they have been out of the country for any period. We also think that further tinkering with the points system will be no substitute for an overall annual limit on economic migration. The immigration Minister has now made the position clear on several occasions. Will the Home Secretary join in the consensus?
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) will address in further detail the Justice Secretary's proposals to reform coroners' procedures, strengthen victim and witness protection and reform the law on homicide. I am sure that there is much in those issues on which we can engage constructively, but I will just make two points. First, any attempt to reintroduce the power of Ministers to remove coroners and juries from inquests will be firmly resisted. Secondly, we are pleased that the Government have dropped plans to reform the Sentencing Guidelines Council so that criminal punishments depend on the levels of prison capacitya proposal that would further weaken the justice system and undermine public confidence. We cannot support attempts to weaken criminal justice just because the Government have failed to provide enough prison places.
	We had at one stage expected the Government to introduce proposals for a new communications data Bill to provide wide new powers for the collection, retention and sharing across Government of even more personal data. It was reported last month that the Home Secretary's officials had advised that the original proposals were
	impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful.
	Can the Home Secretary confirm whether that advice reached her, and whether she agreed with it? I assume that she did because of her sensible decision to consult, which we entirely welcome. I suspect that the Home Secretary and her Department will have the sympathy of many Members across the House about the Home Office's legitimate concerns in this area. We will look carefully at any proposals that she presents, and test the justification, proportionality and safeguards rigorously, robustly and with an open mind.
	The Government, and in particular the Home Office, now have one of the most extensive and intrusive security powers available anywhere in the democratic world. It is noteworthy that today one aspect of thatthe collection and retention of the DNA of those who have never been charged or convicted of offenceshas fallen foul of the European Court of Human Rights. I am delighted to learn that, and I long believed it would be the outcome to the challenge to the Government's incoherent position on the subject. It would be nice to learn during the course of today's debate how the Government intend to move to put right this wrong that has been perpetrated and that has caused immense upset to large numbers of law-abiding people, as I have routinely found from the letters I have received in my mailbag.
	There are also concerns about the national identity card register proposal and the further attempt to force through the measure of 42 days of detention without charge. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 has been stretched well beyond its original focus of dealing with serious crime and terrorism, and we have the onset of a surveillance society that has been outpaced only by the rise of the database state.
	The Home Secretary is wrong about the repeated suggestions from Government that if Members do not agree with any particular security proposals they care less about tackling the threat of terrorism than she does. I wonder what way of life will be left for our children if we do not start to get the balance right on matters such as DNA and surveillance and start to restore some common sense into our arguments, and if we fail to question, and if necessary resist with all due vigour, incessant Government requests for more oppressive and intrusive state powers. This is not ultimately a question of balancing security and liberty, because we cannot defend our freedom by sacrificing it. Time and again the Government have proved that they cannot be trusted with the powers and authority enacted by Parliament. That is one of the key issues we will have to address.
	If ever there was a time to question the powers of counter-terrorism police and to test ministerial accountability over, and responsibility for, the unwieldy security apparatus built up over the past 11 years, and to make the case for resisting the Government's periodic attacks on the right to trial by jury, it must be now, when a Member of this House has been arrested carrying out his work. Parliament itselfthe heart of our democracysuffers at the hands of what increasingly appears to be an unprecedented abuse of state power. It is an abuse of power that this Home Secretary says she knows nothing about and does not wish to take responsibility for. We need much better than that.

Christopher Huhne: I am only modestly surprised to be called to speak so early in the debate, given that it is rather extraordinary that the

Tobias Ellwood: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, who has only just risen to speak, but is it possible to check whether the parliamentary Annunciators across the Estate are working? Judging by the numbers present on the Labour Benches, Members are unaware that this important debate is taking place, and perhaps they should be aware of it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order for the Chair.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman was making, in a rather different way, the very point I was about to make about the extraordinary absence of Members from the Government Benches for a debate that is about an issue our constituents, and voters in general, feel extremely strongly about. The question of how to tackle crime is frequently the No. 1 or No. 2 issue of most concern to voters. It is therefore extraordinary that the Government Benches are so denuded.
	Our reaction to the Home Secretary's speech and to the proposals is that this is another example of what the Home Office is extremely adept at: using legislation as a glorified press release. We are to have the 26th criminal justice Bill and the seventh immigration Bill from this Government since 1997. Various of those Bills have been shovelled through this House so hastily that whole sections and clauses have not been considered at all and have had to be reviewed in the other place. We now know from parliamentary answers to questions tabled by Liberal Democrats that no fewer than 3,600 new criminal offences have been introduced by this Government since 1997, yet extraordinarily, the Home Secretarywho, sadly, is no longer in her placeassures us that one of her key priorities is to reduce the need for police paperwork and bureaucracy. The extraordinary creation of offences by the Government is massively complicating the job of law enforcement and of the whole criminal justice system.
	Some of these offences are completely bizarrefor example, the offence of causing a nuclear explosion. The idea that anyone might cause a nuclear explosion without killing anybody, and therefore being subject to a possible charge of murder, is extremely far-fetched. It is perhaps reassuring for some on the Government Benches that were there to be a nuclear explosion that did not kill anyone, the perpetrator could, indeed, be charged. Other of the new offences include: wilfully pretending to be a barrister; disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer; obstructing workers carrying out repairs to the docklands light railway; offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas day; attaching an ear tag to an animal where it has previously been used to identify another animal; landing at a harbour without permission a catch that includes unsorted fish. I could continue that extraordinary list of new offences.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman has mentioned only one or two offences, from this list of 3,600, that he wishes to remove. On reflection, he may not really wish to remove the protections against the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, to which he made cavalier reference a moment ago. As he is so concerned, and as he has obviously done a huge amount of research on these 3,600 offences, he should make public a full list of all the ones that he would like repealed.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the Justice Secretary for intervening in that way. When he wrote to me in those terms, challenging me to come up with a complete list, I replied offering him the chance to repeal certain of the more absurd offences that have been put on the statute book. I have still not received a reply to that letter, in which I assured him that as soon as those offences, such as causing a nuclear explosion, had been repealed, I would provide him with a new list of further offences that he could then work on repealing.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is either making a trivial debating point or a serious point. The point that he makes all the time is that there are 3,600 new offences. I may question him on a number of those, but he says that he has culled his information from various parliamentary answers. The only conclusion to be drawn from his making that point repeatedly is that he does not think that these 3,600 offences should be on the statute book. He has mentioned about five of the offences. As it is his point, he should be responsible for providing us with a full list of the offences that he thinks should be repealed.

Christopher Huhne: The Justice Secretary accuses me of making a trivial point, but I just wish he knew the difficulties we had in getting Departments even to list the new criminal offences that they have created. If he can assure me that, when we follow up those questions by asking those Departments for a full list of every new criminal offence, he will instruct his colleagues not to rule our request out of order on the grounds that it involves disproportionate cost, I will be delighted to give him a full list. If the Government can be less obstructionist in how they answer parliamentary questions, perhaps Opposition parties will be able to do that. He knows perfectly well that I have given him very good clear examples of absolutely absurd offences that have been put on the statute book, and he has done nothing to repeal them. I can give him chapter and verse and can continue through this list. Frankly, it is not good enough for the Justice Secretary to ask the Opposition to do something that he, in government, ought to be able to do.
	I very much welcome what the Home Secretary said, particularly about how the provisions in the draft legislation on identity checks, which it would seem have been misinterpreted, will be implemented. The key issue has always been the potential for extending legislation beyond its original intention when it is put into practice. We have seen that happen time and again, for example, in the application of counter-terrorism legislation to stifle the heckling of the Justice Secretaryas he now isat a Labour party conference: Walter Wolfgang, a Labour activist, was arrested under counter-terrorism legislation. We must be very careful to ensure that legislation is not extended in this way.
	I very much welcome what the Home Secretary said about the ratification of the protocol on human trafficking. Ratification is well overdue and I am delighted that it is to go ahead. One of the key issues for the Home Office must be implementing the legislation already on the statute book, given that most serious offences have been on the statute book or in common law for many decades, rather than indulging in this extraordinary exercise that we have every year of introducing yet another criminal justice Bill and yet another immigration Bill as a substitute for doing something about implementing the law that we have.
	There is much to support on the police Bill, precisely because it represents a massive U-turn on the central targets that have been a key feature of the Home Office's attitude towards the police since 1997. The Green Paper, the consultation and the response are now saying exactly the right sort of things about local accountability and cutting red tape, but, of course, substantial differences remain between the parties on how that accountability should come about. I listened with interest to what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said about the Conservatives' proposals, but I am not persuaded that their proposals for a single elected sheriff for a police force would avoid the problems of populist posturing, Robocop-style campaigning and confrontational politics that he says it will. The differences in this respect between the Government's proposals and the Conservatives' proposals are minimal, and bring to mind Dr. Johnson's quote that he would not debate
	the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. First, there is no question of having Robocops. The elected commissionerhe would not be called a sheriffwould not replace the chief constable, whose operational independence, which is a subject we have touched on earlier today, would be entirely preserved.
	The elected commissioner would be able to do two things. First, he would be able to produce accountability through his contact with the chief constable, and the fact that he would be informed of what is going on and would be able to feed in his ideas and those on which he stood for election. Secondly, if he were doing his job properly, he would be able to provide leadership throughout the police area that he represents, in galvanising the councillors and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships into better co-operation with the police. That is a sensible way forward.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful for that clarification, but it does not reassure me in one key respect. The single elected commissioner, or the multiple mini-commissioners proposed by the Home Office, would be elected by the first-past-the-post system. That would be the first time that any new body had been elected under that system since 1997. We know from peer-reviewed academic literature that if elections are carried out under first past the post, the resulting body is substantially less representative in terms of both gender and ethnic minority than is the case with other electoral systems [ Interruption. ] Well, the Justice Secretary uses unparliamentary language to say what he thinks of that particular point, but I would be happy to send him the references for the literature I mentioned.
	If we were to go ahead with the Government's model for elected police authorities, there would be the most extraordinary results. I have asked the Electoral Reform Society to analyse the likely results of electing one person for each crime and disorder reduction partnership. On the basis of the 2007 election results, the GovernmentI am told they are a Labour Governmentare proposing a system under which the Conservatives would win 65.2 per cent. of all the police authority seats in England outside London, despite polling only 38 per cent. of the vote.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman should not assume that we desire to introduce a system that would necessarily lead to individuals standing under political labels. I envisage a system that might even lead to cross-party support for individuals standing for such posts.

Christopher Huhne: Given the knowledge that we share of how the British political system has developed over many decades, the hon. and learned Gentleman's point is a trivial one. Independents in local government are an endangered species: they are on the way out. We may regret that, but the likelihood of our being able to revive that endangered species is limited. We have to work with the world as it is, and I would have thought that that point would appeal to Conservative Members, who have traditionally regarded themselves as realistsbut apparently it does not.
	If the Government were to introduce legislation along the lines that they have suggested, the Labour party would lack any elected representatives on 10 police authorities, and it would have only 10 members out of 176 in the three southern regionsthe east of England, the south-east and the south-west. That would mean the most extraordinary disproportionality in representation in various parts of the country. Inevitably, those elected would be badged by political party, and the Conservatives would have an overall majority of elected representatives on 26 police authoritiesthe majority of those in Englandon a minority of the vote.
	There are two really key issues. First, the bodies simply will not be representative of the complexity of the populations in police force areas. That may not matter so much in rural and homogenous areas, but it would matter in urban areas outside London. I take the point made by the hon. and learned Member that his proposal would not apply to London, although he does suggest that the Mayor should hold the police to account in London. The question then is whether the Metropolitan police authority would be able to hold the Mayor in check

Dominic Grieve: At present, we have no intention of changing the system presently in place in London. It is in its infancy, and doubtless all parties will wish to look at how it functions, but the present position is that we do not intend to touch it. It would be foolish to try to do so when it has only just come into existence.

Christopher Huhne: I am glad that we have some agreement that the system in London, which appears to be quite a good system, should continue. However, I am slightly mystified why, if the Conservatives think that the system for London is relatively goodit involves the election of the GLA by proportional representation, followed by the selection of the MPAthey ignore those lessons for the rest of the country.
	In complex urban areas, with substantial ethnic minorities, such as Greater Manchester, Merseyside and the west midlands, the Conservatives' proposaland to a lesser but almost equal extent, the Government's proposalwould ensure that the people elected as commissioners and members of the police authorities would be white, middle-class, middle-aged men in suits. They would not represent the genuine differences, especially ethnic ones, in police force areas. That worries me, because it would set up exactly the sort of problems that led to the riots in Brixton and cities such as Bristol in the early 1980s. If a potentially confrontational system led to the populist election of a single commissioner or a single person in each crime and disorder reduction partnership, it is likely that the police authority would be insensitive to the rights and freedoms of minorities in that area. If that happened, policing by consent would be substantially undermined, and that is a serious danger.
	When I have talked to senior police officers about this matter, they have been very concerned by the potential introduction of populist and confrontational politics into the systemas proposed by both the Government and the official Opposition.

Jack Straw: I hold no particular brief for the Conservatives' proposals, but the hon. Gentleman's reference to the Brixton and Merseyside riots is complete tosh. If he scoured the Scarman report, he would be unable to find any suggestion that the causes of those riots included populist policies being followed by local politicians or, in the case of the Metropolitan police, by the late Willie Whitelaw, who was the antithesis of a populist.

Christopher Huhne: The Justice Secretary deliberately confuses two things that I said. We had at that time serious concerns in ethnic minority communities about the use by the police of stop and search powers, which were clearly part of the lead-up to the riots, especially in Brixton. The only point that I am attempting to makeI am surprised that he finds it difficult to graspis that problems will arise if the political authority running a police force in an area with a substantial ethnic minority population is not sensitive to the sorts of issues that created major problems with public disorder in the early 1980s, including the insensitive exercising of police powers. The Government should take that point into account when they put forward their proposals, because in their present form they would mean the under-representation of ethnic minorities and women, leading to the consequences that I have outlined. I hope that the Government will have reconsidered their position by the time they actually introduce the legislation.

Mark Field: Given the hon. Gentleman's passion for proportional representation, how would he try to rig the PR system to ensure that there are no members of the British National party on any of those police authorities?

Christopher Huhne: I have absolutely no suggestion that we should rig any system. I take a democratic view: if there is a systemas is the case in London, with the GLAwhereby BNP members are elected, they are elected. They do not get very far when they are elected, and are often revealed for what they are. All the rest of us who abhor their politics can then point out how useless they are. In a democracy, that is the correct way to deal with those people; it is not to try to sweep their views under a carpet and pretend they do not exist, but to introduce the best disinfectant of all in the political systemsunlightto get some transparency and reveal them for the odious characters they are, and beat them.

Ann Cryer: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman understands the damage the BNP can do in positions of democratic accountabilityso-called. There were two BNP councillors in my constituency who were absolute poison and did great damage to inter-community relations. I am not sure that he takes that into account.

Christopher Huhne: I fear that the hon. Lady and I will have to disagree on that point. I yield to no one in my abhorrence of BNP politics and I would be extremely supportive of any mainstream party that fought the BNP, but the correct way of doing that in a democratic system is openly. I am shocked that the hon. Lady implicitly suggests that we should introduce a ban on that party because we do not approve of its politics. We have a long and honourable tradition of giving vent to political views, including those of authoritarian and totalitarian traditions on the left and right, and the correct way of making sure that those people do not get a grip on our politics is by getting them out in the open and fighting their politics, and ensuring that their voters understand that the mainstream parties are addressing the issues voters care about. The main reason why a party such as the BNP grows in importance is precisely that so many of our voters feel alienated from a political system that is broken, because this place and other aspects of our political structures do not give adequate vent to people's views or deal adequately with their grievances. In a number of areas, the Liberal Democrats have shown that where we can campaign on the basis of community politics and ensure that people's local grievances are dealt with, the swamp that allows the BNP to fester is drained. That is the correct way to deal with the BNPnothing else.

Mark Field: I entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has been saying about the BNP, but when he talks about populist politics, does he not understand that it is precisely in the areas of law and order and immigration that PR systems along the lines that he recommends will give the BNP the oxygen of publicity?

Christopher Huhne: I am far more worried about the possibility that a populist, who was not necessarily badged under the BNP logo but might be running as an independent or whatever, could secure election in some part of the country under the proposals of the hon. Gentleman's Front-Bench colleagues, or could be running a crime and disorder reduction partnership under the Government's proposals. Those seem to be real risks, so if we want to avoid confrontational politics in holding our police forces to account, and if we want to make sure that police authorities are genuinely representative of all the strands of opinion and the different groups and minorities in their force areas, we must look again at what the Government propose, and we must not go the way that the Conservatives suggest.
	There is much to be welcomed in the proposals for crime mapping. As I said, I welcome extra transparency, and if we can reach a situation whereby people, locally, where it really matters, understand what is happening to crimeand, by the way, to clear-up and detection rates in their area, which are not included in the Government's proposalswe can increase reassurance that crime is being adequately dealt with. That is important.
	I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield that there are real doubts in the public mind about the integrity of crime statistics, in part because it is easy to point out contradictions between the recorded crime figures and the British crime survey figures. I have little doubt that the BCS data, for reasons that Conservative Ministers gave when they were last in government, are the best for assessing long-run trends, but I should like the Office for National Statistics not to have a mere tick-box regulatory role but to take direct, hands-on responsibility for the statistics. I can remember the 1980s, when the Conservative Government changed the definition of unemployment almost every other month. By the end of the decade, public faith in the unemployment figures had virtually disappeared, and it was necessary to re-establish public faith by ensuring that the figures were seen to be collated by an entirely independent body removed from those using the data to make political points. I very much hope that there will be broad consensus for the proposals.
	We are very much in favour of many of the measures that the Home Secretary has announced in this place and elsewhere. Many of them were trailed in the pressnot, I suspect, a leak but a brief: in government, we brief, but they leak. There were a number of briefings, which seemed highly orchestrated, about the advantages of ending binge drinking with measures to restrict promotions and super-cut-price deals. Much of that, however, is to use legislation as a press release rather than using existing legislation to increase the number of prosecutions of off-licences for selling to people who are under age.
	That problem is extraordinarily prevalent. One survey suggested that 40 per cent. of establishments selling alcohol are prepared to sell to under-age drinkers, and do soyet the existing law is poorly applied. There has been an increase in the number of prosecutions relating to the sale of alcohol to under 18-year-olds; in England and Wales, the figure has increased from 105 in 2002 to 854 in 2006the latest figures available to me. However, in comparison with the scale of the problemif it really is the case, as the survey suggests, that 40 per cent. of establishments are selling to under-age peoplethe number of prosecutions is still just scratching at the surface. We need to be much tougher in dealing with this issue.
	The Home Secretary spoke about the immigration Bill. The Liberal Democrats will support the Government's commitment to the integration of ethnic minority communities, which is absolutely crucial and a vital part of ensuring that a proper immigration policy works, but why are the Government cutting funding for non-English speakers? There has been a 39 per cent. plunge in non-English speakers enrolling on English language courses: the number is down from nearly 550,000 to 335,000the lowest since 2001-02 [ Interruption. ] The Minister for Borders and Immigration suggests that the figures are somehow false, but they come from the Government's answers to our parliamentary questions.

Phil Woolas: The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, and I am grateful for his support for English language courses, but we have to look at the totality of expenditure on English language courses, not just the particular figures he has cited. However, I take his point.

Christopher Huhne: We asked for the total expenditure in this case, and the answer that we got was very clear. I am afraid that it does not bear out the suggestion that there has been any increase in Government funding. The budget for English language lessons for immigrants was cut by 9 million last year, from 298 million to 289 million. The figures show, as I said, a 39 per cent. reduction in non-English speakers enrolling on English language courses. Again, a theme, certainly a theme of everything that the Government have been doing in this respect, is one of good intentions carefully flagged up in the use of legislation as a press releasebut where is the implementation? Where is the delivery?
	I am very pleased that the communications data Bill has been dropped. I hope that that truly Orwellian proposal will not come back, as it would have created an expensive database of phone calls and e-mails, and, frankly, would have been an extraordinary intrusion into civil liberties. We have not heardI hope that we will be told by the Justice Secretary in his winding-up speechhow the Government intend to react to the very firm decision today by the European Court of Human Rights about retaining the DNA samples of those who are innocent. Given the results, that is an extraordinarily firm decision. I cannot remember, in many years of observing the European Court, a 17-nil decisioncompletely unanimousthat the Government's position is contrary to the European convention on human rights.
	If the Government want a sensible policy on what samples should be held on a DNA database, they should get rid of all samples from innocent peopleas they must now do, I believe, as a result of the European Court rulingand they should start a programme to collect samples from people who were convicted before 2001. We now know that more than 2 million people who have been convicted of a criminal offence are not on the DNA database, because they were convicted of committing a crime before 2001. So we have a ridiculous topsy-turvy Government policy of accreting samples from innocent people, children and others who are under age. That is absolutely useless in improving the conviction rate, as we now know, yet we have not been collecting data samples from people who were convicted, although that would be much more effective. Again, I am pleased that the Home Secretary has made it clear that there will be no question, other than at our borders, of having police and other official powers to check for identity cards.
	I have been talking for rather longer than I wanted to, because of the interventions, but let me say something about the coroners and justice Bill. I am still suspicious of what may be the Government's intentions on that Bill. There is no doubt that we need reform, that speed and timeliness in coroners' inquests are a real issue, and that it is crucial that bereaved families can get an inquest rapidly. However, the Government's proposals in the counter-terrorism Bill, now dropped, were horrendous, and they must not be resuscitated. Coroners' inquests are an essential bulwark against the abuse of state power, as they establish what happened if a death occurs, particularly in custody at the hands of an agent of the state. They were initiated precisely because we could not trust the Tudor secret service to perform its duties unless deaths in custody were properly investigated.

Greg Mulholland: On a specific and important point, in the wake of the inquest into the tragic death of my constituent, Imogen D'Arcy, who committed suicide at the age of 13, having accessed suicide websites, campaigners on the issue, including the all-party parliamentary group, Papyrus, the Samaritans and the D'Arcy family, warmly welcome the announcement that the Government will tighten the law on suicides in connection with websites, but that needs to be explained properly. We believed originally that that would come under the Suicide Act 1961, rather than the coroners and justice Bill. Will the Government give us more clarification, particularly a timetable? People want to see change as soon as possible.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Justiceor someone else who was listeningcan deal with that issue in the wind-ups.
	Before I finish making the point about coroners playing a crucial part in holding to account the abuse of state power, let me say that we welcome and will support many other aspects of the proposals. We do not, however, feel that the police reform proposals go far enough. We have arguedon police pay review, for examplefor a complete review of the police contract. For example, an issue that we do not hear about from either Conservative or Labour Members, despite its pertinence in current circumstances, is the very restrictive nature of the single point of entry for chief constables.
	Broadly, people should come into the police force from the bottom, and there is an honourable tradition, as in the French army at one stage, of every corporal carrying a field marshal's baton in their knapsack. However, with complex issues such as the prosecution of fraud, for example, where a degree in accountancy and some experience as a forensic accountant might be of considerable use to someone leading an investigation, there must be enough exceptions to bring in people if they have particular expertise. We would like to open up the issues regarding the police contract such as lifetime employment, pay linked to seniority, pensions and the effectiveness of the incapability procedure.
	We must also touch on the subject of prostitution. I am sure that every hon. Member wants to protect women from exploitation, but the sort of proposals that the Government have made for a Finnish system of criminalising clients indirectly has a very poor record of successful prosecutions, and I do not believe that that is the way forward.
	Overall, there will be elements that we welcome and others that we criticise. I hope increasingly that we can find some consensus about what works in criminal justice, rather than finding ourselves locked in populist battles about retribution and vengeancewhich the Secretary of State for Justice is quite keen on, as a political theme. Surely, the key issue for any hon. Member who is concerned about cutting crime should be what works. In that context, we are a very long way from taking on board the evidence from the United Statesnor do we spend as much as we should on research to find out what works here. If we did, the Government would be much less disposed to be a threat to our civil liberties than they have proved to be since they were first elected in 1997, and the essential conflicts that inevitably exist between the use of state power in going after criminal activity and the defence of our civil liberties would be less acute if we could anchor the criminal justice debate rather more firmly in real evidence of which interventions work, and at what stage.

Mark Field: For what I fear will be the first of many years to come, the Queen's Speech unashamedly focuses first and foremost on economic issues. Long before the nation was firmly awoken from its slumber to the magnitude of our collective debt crisis by the frightening figures contained in the Chancellor's pre-Budget report last week, some of us had repeatedly warned in the House that, instead of building a secure future, we have been borrowing from it. In truth, the state of the public finances has been a national disgrace for some time. Now, already unsustainable debt levels look set to soar for years to come.
	I make few apologies, as the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, for focusing on economic matters, but they will inevitably have an impact on home affairs and justice going forward. Over 11 years of Labour administration, too much Government borrowing has been funding current consumption. Now, in this time of economic crisis, we seem intent on continuing that approach; but as a strategy, it is neither prudent nor sustainable.
	Our nation stands at a crossroads. I fear that by blindly following the Government's path, with the many bits of legislation that have been announced in the Gracious Speech and in the past 24 hours, we are condemning future generations of Britons, including those still to be born, to pick up the bill for current welfare, health care and pensions provision, as well as for all the other expenditure on various Home Office experiments in the past decade or so and in years to come. In that way, we risk our nation's permanent demotion from being a global economic player as the financial crisis allows commercial and financial power to move firmly eastwards, particularly to the emerging economic superpowers of India and China.
	Far from encouraging the unchecked growth of the state in these times of trouble, for the electorate, we must tell it as it is: the apparently limitless era of cheap and easy money is firmly behind us. An increase in state intervention, as we have seen in recent weeks, may soften the financial blow in the immediate term, but the looming level of interest payments alone on our rising debt risks lowering living standards for decades to come. That will have quite an impact on a range of social issues and social divisions within our society.
	Last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed what many of us have long suspected: this year's overspend will far exceed the 43 billion that was predicted as recently as the March Budget, and will rise to 78 billion. It will then reach a colossal 118 billion in 2009-10, always assuming that the Government can, for the first time this century, not overshoot their projected public sector deficit. By 2012-13, the nation will be battling with a net debt that will account for 57 per cent. of gross domestic product, with 350 million being spent in excess of tax receipts every day of the year. That prediction is based on the Government's own figures, which have been shown to be selective and perhaps hopelessly optimistic in the past. It takes no account of expenditure on Network Rail, the cost of bailing out Northern Rock, Bradford  Bingley, Halifax Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, or of the off-balance sheet financing of public infrastructure projects.
	The figures are now so unfeasibly vast that I fear the general public remain blissfully unaware of the seismic implications of the unprecedented level of Government debt that is now locked into the system. The recent banking bail-out, following the credit crisis, has provided the Government with an alibi for the exorbitant levels of public debt, which were already spiralling dangerously out of control. We must ring-fence the billions accrued for the bail-out and the Government's recently announced 20 billion fiscal stimulus plan from the enormous sums that were already on and, indeed, off the public balance sheet.
	If this Queen's Speech is to mark a departure from the past, the new spirit of the age should be for value for money out of the public purse. I fear instead, however, that the idea of big Government as an ever-benevolent cash cow is entrenching even further. The notion that however bad things get financially for the individual, the state will move to soften the blow, has only been increased by the Government's intervention to protect depositors in Northern Rock, Icesave and others, as well as by the Prime Minister's latest announcement, only yesterday, of a two-year benefit, in relation to mortgage payments, to families with children and to pensioners. The Government are returning to their comfort zone, with an economic narrative of interference in the name of protecting the public through continued high spending.
	For sure, no Government can sit idly by; I accept that current events are epoch-changing, and that in decades to come people will look back on these months when they consider economic history and important decisions that have to be made. We should not be immune to the pleadings of those who bear the economic brunt of these hard times. In many ways, those pleadings will become ever stronger in the next year, as we all know, as the apparent economic crisis becomes much more evident to many of our electors. Equally, however, it is important that any action that is taken to soothe our financial troubles is taken responsiblyI might even say prudentlyand with a firm eye on our long-term economic future.
	It is imperative that the public are given a reality check. The servicing of the colossal debt that we have already racked up, let alone the somewhat irresponsible spending that is still to come, risks lowering living standards for many years to come. Above all, it will soon dawn on a new generation of younger voters that the unspoken message of the political class, across political parties, to anyone under 30 is that their generation will need not only to fund the cost of pensions for those who are older now, but to lower significantly their own financial expectations when the time comes for them to retire.
	The availability of cheap goods such as clothes, technology and alcohol has created a false sense of material wealth in the young. The longer-term prospect of paying off huge student debts is something that, I am thankful to say, my generationI am only 20 years out of universityhas never had to be concerned about. The rosy future that is envisaged of enjoying a standard of living as good as one's parents, experiencing a decent pension in a retirement that is likely to last for decades and expecting the generous range of state benefits that those in retirement currently take for granted will be unsustainable for the younger generation that is growing up.
	Any failure by the Government rapidly to grasp that nettle risks bringing about serious social unrest in the years ahead. Our society will become economically divided as never before between old and young, as I have pointed out, between those who work in the comparatively secure and well-pensioned public sector and those in the private sector who are reliant on private wealth creation, and between those with globally transferable opportunities and skills, such as Members of the House, and those in an increasingly large tail of low-skilled, chaotic lifestyles.
	I have seen such divides even in my constituency. Labour Members are often sceptical about what life must be like in Westminster, but the community is very polarised. Of course, there are tremendous pockets of wealth in places such as Belgravia, Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Marylebone, but in parts of my constituency, in Pimlico and Bayswater, many people live chaotic lifestyles. They live the sort of lifestyles that probably horrified people when they heard about what happened to baby P only a few miles to the north in Haringey. I, as a Member of Parliament, and my local councillors, can understand that although that sort of thing is not exactly a norm, it is not entirely out of the ordinary. Such events are worrying signs of the polarised society in which we live. That level of polarisation has always been fairly apparent in our capital city, certainly in central London, but I fear that it is becoming even stronger in many other parts of the country, and that it will have profound impacts on the whole issue of justice and the way in which we tackle law and order in the years ahead.
	In addition, we must ensure that the public understand the international implications of our country's continued indebtedness and severely weakened economic clout. We are witnessing the first signs of a seismic and rapid shift of power from the United States and Europe to China, India, Russia and even the Gulf states. The near collapse of the global banking industry is not just an issue of restoring confidence, important though that is, and the Government have tried to take important steps in that direction; it is also about the trust of our electors and of those who use the financial services industry. However, those issues will only accelerate trends that are already in play. The US economy may never recover its dominant position in global markets, and we have to accept that the City of London's position as a leader in the provision of financial and business services will be sorely tested in the years ahead.
	In the midst of all the damage and destruction to the value of the west's financial resources, we face a major loss of economic power and international prestige. Put simply, money is power, and such financial means go hand in hand with global political leadership. The bail-out of US and European banks will be underwritten by the flooding, in the global capital markets, of US and European Government bonds, which will be mopped up by cash-rich sovereign wealth funds, particularly in China, the Gulf and Russia. The power that this money buys will allow them to exert far more political influence, and I believe that in places such as China and Russia, that will be backed up by military force around their borders. I fear that the model of democracy, open societies and free markets supported by the G7 will be sorely put to the test in the years to come.
	In recent months, we have seen that one of the few impediments to Russia exercising military power beyond its borders is the influence of an educated, wealthy and fast-growing domestic middle class. To date, India and Chinabeyond their problems in Kashmir, Burma and Tibethave shown relatively little interest in exercising their own military muscle. I believe, however, that as their global financial clout becomes more apparent, so too will their appetite for interference in world affairs. I also fear that some elements of the Islamic world will have regard to the west's ongoing economic crisis. In spite of the Government's projected figures, this crisis will not have gone away by the end of 2009. It is a crisis of economic confidence that will take up the rest of this decade and continue well into the 2020s. We have to ask who in the west will have the financial clout, let alone the political will, to spend money on policing any new flashpoints in the middle east or in parts of Asia.
	I have visited China three times in the past five years, and I have been blown away by the pace of development there. If the US and Europe lose their moral leadership in the management of global financial markets, there is little doubt that, within a decade, the west will be forced to accept China as an economic and political equal.
	I have also visited India twice since 2004. It is a nation under the international spotlight, as the monstrous hand of terrorism visited the great commercial city of Bombay last week. I am pleased that my own police force in the City of London and many other institutions under the Home Office have played a role in assisting India with aspects of terrorism in the past, and I hope that they will give it a great deal of co-operation in the future.
	India has been sadly familiar with terror attacks, but the scale of the assault on Bombay, and the western targets involved, bestow on that city the dubious honour of being considered a global financial centre worthy of such an intricately planned outrage. As appalling as recent events have been, I also believe that they have exposed India for the first time in the eyes of many westerners as a real force to be reckoned with as a country. Bombay's debut as a prominent item on global news bulletins might be viewed in retrospect as the formal recognition of its growing prominence in the international financial system. There is no doubt that that outward-looking, cosmopolitan, dynamic city will bounce back with resilience and confidence, as it services an ever stronger internal market and continues its search for global trading partners.
	Let us make no mistake: a formal shift of power eastwards will present opportunities as well as challenges. Our nation must be ready to exploit those opportunities, but I am increasingly concerned that the twin burden of high levels of public and private debt, along with a rudderless, untrusted financial sector, risks the movement of global business away from our shores. No doubt we will also face the emergence of deep social divides, should we continue down the dangerous path of consuming today and making future generations pay tomorrow for what we consume.
	As a great defender of free markets, free trade and global capitalism, I am willing to bet that, while the Government currently have an important role in stabilising and revitalising our confidence-battered economy, it will eventually be hard work, enterprise and freedom in the marketplace that will ensure that our economy thrives again. If the best of economic times are to lie ahead, the moral and economic case must also be made for a smaller, more efficient state, and the untapped appetite among our fellow Britons for financial discipline and prudence must be encouraged.
	We face letting down a whole generation, but the Conservative party already has a wide range of solutions to our declining competitiveness through our education and social affairs agenda. Long term, we must focus on promoting diverse and versatile skills, aspiration and mobility among our population. Yes, there is no doubt that the state must offer some security in these times of extreme need, but that aspect of its function should not overshadow the long-term importance of promoting flair, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. It is only through those three factors that we can ensure prosperous times ahead.
	I am sorry that my message is slightly negative and depressing, but we are living in difficult times. I hope that the Government will take on board many of these issues, including the many long-term concerns that should be in the forefront of our minds as we look in the short term at the proposals in the Queen's Speech. I look forward to hearing other Members' contributions, even if they stick rather more closely to the home affairs and justice agenda.

David Davis: I shall be extremely brief, lest I lose this enormous audience. I want to focus on the famous, and regular, line in the Queen's Speech:
	Other measures will be laid before you.
	A number of measures are not in the Queen's Speech. One has been promised in the long run by the Government, and I shall make an argument for accelerating it. Another was promised in the draft Queen's Speech, but has been deferred. A third has been made necessary by this morning's judgment by the European Court of Human Rights.
	During the course of this year, we have had serious intellectual battles over the counter-terrorism strategy. Much of that has been about freedom and individual rights, but a good deal has also been about how successful the strategy is, and how successful it needs to be. The Government have rightly said that the threats to our people are increasing on a day-by-day basis, that they are growing by about 25 per cent. per annum, and that they are difficult for the police and the other agencies to deal with. That is an argument that the Government have put forward to support repressive measures, including the proposed increase in detention without charge from 28 days to 42.
	The first missing Bill that I want to discuss is the Bill to allow the use of intercept evidence in court. If we had such a Bill, we would not face the problems that we are facing today, with a provision for 28 days' detention, let alone 42. In our debates, we have often raised the issue of the United States. After 9/11, the US faces at least as great a terrorist threat as we do, yet it seems to cope with it much better than we do. It is able to bring charges within two days of arrest, and full indictment within 10 days. It can do that because it has a combination of laws that allows it to act without visiting injustice or oppression on its people. Among the most important is its ability to use intercept evidence.
	Earlier this year, I visited Washington and talked to representatives of all the counter-terrorism agencies and of the Department of Justice. I had the advantage of being able to talk to the Deputy Secretary of State for Justice who dealt with terrorism. He told me in some detail about how intercept worked. He made it clear that the use of intercept evidence in court was fundamental to two types of judicial success. One was in dealing with terrorism, and the other was in dealing with gangsterismthe mafia and organised crime. They are similar targets in many ways, and it is true to say that the American judicial system has had fantastic success in dealing with gangsterism and considerable success in dealing with terrorism. It all hangs on intercept.
	The Deputy Secretary of State for Justice talked us through a case. The first thing he said was, If we have any of these cases, the jury wonder where the juicy tapes arehis wordsif they do not hear them in court. Juries have come to depend on the intercept evidence as a central part of the judicial process. The US process involves a two-stage approach. The first is a so-called CIPAClassified Information Procedures Acthearing, at which it is decided what can be presented to the court. In his words, If we win the CIPA hearing, the case goes straight to plea bargaining. There is almost never a full case thereafter.
	That is very different from our major terrorism trials. In the past couple of years we have had enormous trials at huge cost. I am thinking not just of the cost in money terms. The cost of the paralysis of our agencies in supporting those court cases is incalculable. It is extremely important that we understand the power of the intercept evidence usable in court, particularly in conjunction with a reasonably aggressive approach to plea bargaining, especially with the minor players. If we succeed in that, we will achieve a number of things. We will make it possible to try more people, to convict more people, to convict them with greater safety, and to convict them faster and more cheaply than we do at present. There are enormous benefits to be had for us, and we are probably the country in the world that would gain most from the use of intercept evidence, so it is rather surprising that we do not have that already.
	The Government have, quite properly, set up an advisory committee that is working on the matter. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) is a member of the committee. I spoke to him before the debate. He said that the committee was working hard on extremely complex matters. I will not be present for the winding-up speeches, unfortunately, but I hope that the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor will be able to tell us that the committee will not be short of resources. If it were inadequately resourced, that would be a considerable false economy. I should like to see the relevant Bill brought forward.
	The Bill that was missing, which was mentioned by the Liberal spokesman and by my hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, is the communications and data Bill. It was in the draft Queen's Speech, but not in the most recent version. The Bill has gone for consultation in early 2009, and I understand that we will get a published Bill thereafter. I suspect that it was pulled because the central component of it, the idea of an enormous database of, effectively, intercept datadata showing e-mail addresses, phone calls and internet accesseswas seen as horrifically unpopular when it eventually became widely known that that would happen. It would make the argument over 42 days look like a picnic. In the public view, unlike a 42-days measure, it would appear to impinge on everybody's privacy and therefore be enormously unpopular.
	As in the case of 42 days, I talked through these issues with the agencies and the police forces. I had all sorts of secret briefings. I hope nobody will go to prison for it. The outcome was pretty straightforward. Telephone and internet data are already retained by the companies as a result of European directive 2006/24, from memory, so there is no question of the data being there or not being there. The simple question is whether the data should be held in a huge database by the state. That has all sorts of enormous disadvantages. There will inevitably be suspicion about why it must be held there, as it does not add a jot to the available information.
	The only worry one might have in that respect is that although getting such data out of the companies requires an explicit warrantry processrather relevant in the House todayand therefore requires our agencies to be under proper control and under the law, one could not be quite so confident about a central database. There is also a fear that we might see attempts at data miningtrying to spot suspicious characters through their telephone and e-mail records. Such an ambition, if it exists, would be daft. Most of the evidence on data mining shows that it is pretty ineffective. Nevertheless, it would be a massive intrusion on people's privacy.
	I hope that if and when the measure comes back, it comes back without that database. If it provides for such a database, the Government can guarantee themselves an interesting year of battles on the matter. Indeed, I can guarantee the Government an interesting year of battles on the matter. I want to see the ability to intercept, as I said in my opening argument. I want to see the agencies able to do what they need to do. What I do not want to do is to give any agency of Government the ability to go on a fishing expedition without proper warrantry control. It is very simple. My understanding is that most of the agencies and the police forces agree with that, and that only one or two agencies have a different view. The Government and the Home Office must be firm with them and make it clear to them that that is not acceptable to the British public.
	Both Opposition Front-Bench speakers have also touched on the last issue that I want to mention: today's excellent judgmentI never thought that I would ever say thisfrom the European Court of Human Rights. I would have been much happier if we had made the decision ourselves. I do not think that the main Opposition parties differ much on human rights; the issue is about who should make the decision about them. However, the ECHR judgment is excellentand, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) said, its unanimity is outstanding. I thought that the decision would be split, because it was taking so long to come out, but it was not.

Christopher Huhne: It was the time they took to count.

David Davis: Yes, it could have been the time taken to count the votes, although I sort of doubt it.
	Where are we now? As it stands, the law is that police guidelines allow deletion only in exceptional circumstances. As far as I can see, the first applications for deletion receive mandatory, compulsory refusal. That has given us the biggest database in the world. The numbers are astounding4.2 million people, of whom 1 million are innocent.; that is 7 per cent. of our population. The nearest comparator is Austria, with a figure of 1 per cent., which gives a clear idea of how heavy-handed we are on this issue. The Government had intended the numbers to match those on the national fingerprint databasethat is, 7.3 millionand had they carried on, they would have got there by 2012.
	The interesting point is that I think that the Government are deceiving themselves, rather than setting out to deceive us. The Prime Minister said that 114 murders had been resolved on the back of the database. When we asked for one exampleI have asked several timesthe Government have never been able to provide it, as a statistical analysis is involved. It is based on a series of errors. I will not take the House through the whole GeneWatch analysis, but suffice it to say that not every DNA sample found in a location even shows that a person was there; these days, such samples can be transferred by other people as a result of handshakes, sweat being carried across and so on. Secondly, if the person was at the location, they will not necessarily be the criminal. Thirdly, even if they are the criminal, they will not necessarily be convicted on the basis of the data, for other reasons.
	There has been a massive overestimate of the importance of such samples. The hon. Member for Eastleigh made a very important point when he said that the Government have casually gone along sweeping up the 1 million innocent people while ignoring the couple of million guilty people from pre-2001. Actually, I should say to the hon. Gentleman that I think that the date was a little earlier than that; some people were in prison at the time and there is an overlap. Nevertheless, the people essentially from pre-2001 have been ignored.
	I urge the Government to consider the example of Scotland, which has a better system and a better outcome in terms of criminal convictions. The issue should not be a dividing line across the House; we should be able to arrive at a practical solution that protects the privacy of individualsmost particularly, the 100,000 innocent children who should not be on the databasebut gives the police the ammunition and mechanisms that they need to carry things through.
	The issue worries me in one other respect. I do not mean this in any pejorative way, but in the past few years the Government have been a little naive about their use of technology. Whether in respect of databases, DNA or surveillance, they have put an awful lot of weight on technology. The problem is that although a large number of people think that DNA technology is absolutely infallible, even a cursory look at low copy number techniques shows that it is anything but that. However, put in front of a jury, the technology has a power much greater than it deserves. I do not want us to build an anti-crime or anti-terrorism strategy on that technology-plus-database approach.
	I will finish by saying that many of these issues will not necessarily be for dispute unless the Government want to pick a fight yet again. As they know, we are always happy to give them the fight, but the raw truth is that there is a way through that should be to the advantage of our country, without any of us having to have a serious dispute over it.

Charles Walker: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in the 12th Queen's Speech debate under the current Government. I imagine that there will be one moreunlucky No. 13. I sincerely hope that is unlucky for this Labour Government, not for the Conservative party, in that the 13th Queen's Speech will be the last one that we get from them for some years to come.
	I will try to stick to the Home Office brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am sure that you will forgive me if I stray slightly. I do not think that a huge number of Members are waiting to speak, so I should not be putting too many noses out of joint, but if I do, I am sure that you will point it out to me.
	Before I move on to the substantive part of my speech, I should like to focus on the operational independence of the police, about which a lot has been said over the past two or three days. Let me point out that the operational independence of the police was compromised about three years ago, during the debate over 90 days' detention, when chief constables from around the country were urged by the Government to write to Members of Parliament asking them to support 90 days. That seemed to break a long-held convention that chief constables did not involve themselves in the day-to-day business of Parliament. From that moment on, the rot set in.
	The rot has been particularly noticeable in the Metropolitan police, whose problems have been well documented. The commissioner has just retired early, and of course there are the ongoing problems with last week's raid on the offices of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) here, in his constituency and at his home. I hope that the Home Office takes a good long look at the operations of the Metropolitan police, because it seems to be becoming dysfunctional as an organisation, with a group of fiefdoms not talking to one another and pursuing their own different agendas. The public in London are beginning to lose confidence in the Metropolitan police, and we cannot afford for that to happen at the moment, with the Olympics just around the corner, in a little over three years' time, and the daily threat posed by terrorists.
	As regards counter-terrorism and legislation on counter-terrorism, I remain concerned about the erosion of civil liberties. Our democracy, which we have treasured over the past 400 years, has made this country what it is today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) pointed out. We remain one of the richest economies in the world, despite the current difficulties in the financial markets. We have wonderful things that have been brought about by democracy. We have, still, a thriving trade union movement. We have an NHS. We have wealth creation. We have vibrant and open debate. Those things, collectively, have made this country what it is.
	I am concerned that over the past few years we have taken many of our traditions for granted and cast some of them aside. We have put aside trial by jury in certain casescomplex cases, admittedly, but our legal system should be capable of rising to the challenge of being put to the test through complex cases. We have seen the introduction of double jeopardy, whereby someone can be tried twice for the same crime. Those sorts of powers have been used by dictatorships through the ages and across the world in order finally to find a jury or judge who will give them the result that they want. Double jeopardy has been used to restrict people's liberties and to corrupt the legal system.
	There have been restrictions on our free speech. This is a well worn example, but it is still highly relevant. A few years ago, a woman stood at the Cenotaph and read out, very gently and quietly, the names of our war deadthe young men and women who had fallen in Iraq and, I believe, Afghanistan, serving their country. She was arrested and detained. That is not a Great British thing to do. It is not the British way, and we should rightly remain concerned about it.
	We talk continually, still, about the merits of ID cards. I am implacably opposed to ID cards, as I believe many of my constituents are. This country belongs to me. I was born here. I have a right to be here. I do not have to prove myself to anyone, nor should I have to. Yes, there are problems with the immigration system, problems that I feel the Government are largely responsible for, but the citizens of this country should not pay for the Government's failings by sacrificing more of their freedoms.

Mark Field: My hon. Friend referred to the British way, something which many of us feel strongly in our hearts. It has been the tradition in this country that we have an unwritten constitution. Does he now feel that the time is ripe for a codified constitution to be put in place to protect the liberties that all of us have perhaps taken for granted, but feel at this stage [ Interruption. ] I am not passing a judgment either way on this matter, but given the concerns that my hon. Friend expressed, does he feel that it would be the right way forward?

Charles Walker: I hope that we have not yet reached that stage, but if we are to avoid reaching it, now is the time for Members of Parliament to be big, to stand up and be counted and to fight for the freedoms that we treasure. It does not matter whether we are in the Labour party, the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrat party. We love this country, we love our democracy and it is up to us to stand up and fight for it and to challenge those forces that would diminish and traduce it.
	Today, we have had some welcome news on the DNA database. I cannot believe that the records of perhaps 6 million innocent people are kept on that database. They are people arrested or detained by the police who are not guilty of any crime beyond perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but their records are retained on the database. We hear this rubbish, this Orwellian nonsense: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That is something we would expect to hear from the Stasi in eastern Europe. It is a nonsensical statement.
	I have a constituent who has committed not a single crime in his life, but on his advanced Criminal Records Bureau check he carries details of a wicked and violent crime committed against a member of his family by a totally unconnected third party. He has nothing to hide, but he has everything to fear. I have taken up his case with the Information Commissioner, the Home Office and the police, and nobody will act to right this wrong. It is an act that would be more at home in Stalinist Russia than in this country.

Mark Field: My hon. Friend makes his point with great passion. I very much agree with it, and the contribution made earlier on the matter of the DNA database by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). Does my hon. Friend acceptand I hope that the Minister will take this point on boardthat DNA technology is important, but that in 40 or 50 years' time we will have DNA mark 2 or mark 3 technology that will be considerably superior to what we have now? It will show up many of the deficiencies that my right hon. and hon. Friends have pointed out.

Charles Walker: My hon. Friend is right; we are in the early stages of this technology. My concerns about the DNA database rest on the fact that the details of people who have not committed any crime are retained on that database. Whether it is a database operating today or in 30 years' time, that is wrong, and it must be stopped.
	Finally, as we are talking about Home Office Bills, I return to the role of Parliament in scrutinising Bills. Parliament has undoubtedly been diminished over the past decade. We have less time for debate. We have less time to discuss Bills on Second Reading, and to consider them on Report and in Committee. It is important that we get that time back; so often a brief Second Reading debate is truncated because we have one or two statements beforehand. The Bill then goes into Committee, which may meet for six or eight sittings, where whole areas of the Bill remain undiscussed. Then it comes back to this place on Report, and the Government table a raft of new clauses and amendments that no one has had a chance to consider beforehand. So the Bill goes through almost unscrutinised, and again we are left to rely on those in the other place to make up for our deficiencies.
	Of course, Members of Parliament are not blameless. A few committed Members of Parliament are in the Chamber, taking part in and listening to the debate. However, too many of us perceive a one-line Whip as an opportunity to go homeyes, to do worthy things, such as spending time in our constituencies on constituency engagements, but our constituents send us here to make their concerns known in this place and to give them a voice in the mother of Parliaments and the cockpit of the country. We must take that responsibility seriously. I hope that I am not getting too many dirty looks from colleaguesthey are excluded from my criticisms because they are here and should be congratulated on that. If they would like me to name them for the benefit of  Hansard, I am happy to do that.
	Our freedoms are important and we need to protect them. Last week, a Conservative Member of Parliament was arrested and his House of Commons office was searched. Next week, that could happen to a Labour Member of Parliamentwe hope to God that it will not. Let us remember that only a few months ago the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) had his conversations and private discussions with a constituent who was in prison recorded. The police have form and we need to ensure that proper safeguards are in place so that our constituents, wherever they are, have confidence when they talk to us that those discussions are private.
	I will not detain the House any longer. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make a short contribution.

Alan Beith: I want to consider the Gracious Speech from the standpoint of the Justice Committee and its predecessor, the Constitutional Affairs Committee. Some of its contents relate to our work.
	I am not one to complain when a Queen's Speech is short and there is less legislation. The Government may be beginning to recognise that the ills of the world and the country sometimes require action in forms other than legislation. The thirst for legislation, especially on justice and home affairs, has produced legislative indigestion and many Bills that are not fully implemented, not capable of being implemented or should never have been introduced.
	I welcome the Bill that was first regarded as the coroners Bill, but has become a combination of that draft measure and other justice provisions. In 2005-06, the Constitutional Affairs Committee severely criticised the Government's original coroners Bill and we need to ascertain the extent to which the clauses of the new Bill tackle our concerns, those of families and those of people experienced in the system, as well as the anxieties that were expressed in the two inquiries that followed the appalling Harold Shipman case. I should say cases because he murdered more than 200 people and the system failed to identify him, despite his certifying numerous deaths, which he caused.
	Let me outline the key points about the coroner's element of the coroners and justice Bill. First, death certification must be effectively reformed and I am glad that it will be included in the measure. However, we want to be satisfied that the reform is sufficient to achieve its purpose. Secondly, medical examiners, which the Bill will introduce, should not be part of the same NHS trust that runs the hospital where a death has occurred. The medical examiner certification should not be done by an employee of the very NHS trust about which relatives are concerned.
	Thirdly, funding for coroners, their staff and training needs to be more consistent. If people had not read our report or did not know the system they would be amazed by the extent of its diversity. In some areas, the local authority pays for coroners' offices; in others, the police pay for them; and in others, coroners are serving police officersan arrangement that is sometimes pragmatically convenientand there is no real consistency. There is also little consistency about providing and paying for training so that coroners' officers and other staff can fulfil the needs of the families with whom they deal. Some of them do a superb jobindeed, I have heard much testimony to the quality of the work that some coroner's officers dobut the system is inconsistent and sporadic.
	Having a chief coroner is a good thing, but we do not want over-centralisation. The Committee pointed out that there will still be a need for some part-time coroners, if remote areas are not to be completely cut off from the coroner service and if relatives are not going to have to travel long distances even to discuss with the coroner's office how their inquest will be handled. In that context, the other key point in the Bill is how far the rights of the bereaved will be dealt with.

Henry Bellingham: The right hon. Gentleman accepted that the coroners in this country do a superb job. However, we do not want to centralise the system and thereby get rid of a good example of localism working well.

Alan Beith: I agree with the hon. Gentleman to this extent: we do not want an over-centralised system, but we need some central management of the system. Whereas many coroners do a good job, some have not managed their work very well at all. There are examples in some parts of the country of terrible delays in holding inquests. I am not thinking of the serious delays in inquests relating to service in Iraq or Afghanistan, which have raised separate problems; I am thinking of areas where inquests have built up because the service was not properly managed or resourced. It is therefore necessary, as the Government maintain, to have a chief coroner, who will need the power to ensure a certain level of approved standards. At the same time, however, we do not want areas to be dependent on a distant service that does not recognise, for example, that life in rural communities is different from life in urban communities.
	I have referred to that part of the coroners and justice Bill that relates to coroners, but it is not yet clear what else will be in the Bill. There will be data protection provisions, which I hope will include strengthening the Information Commissioner's independence and giving him the powers necessary to fine organisations that breach data protection provisions. The commissioner has been left with only the nuclear button to press. He needs wider powers, as we have argued, and the Government seem to recognise that.
	In the longer term, it would be better if the commissioner had the independence that comes from being a creature of Parliament, not of the Government. That is the position for the Scottish Information Commissioner, our Comptroller and Auditor General, the parliamentary ombudsman and the chairman of the Electoral Commission, who all relate to Parliament, not to the Government. We understand that there will also be provisions in the Bill relating to homicide and the Sentencing Guidelines Council. We intend to look into those carefully.
	The Queen's Speech prompts the question whether, as a result of the coroners and justice Bill and the Government's other activities, there will be, in the words of the Government's declared objective, an
	effective, transparent and responsive justice system for victims, witnesses and the wider public.
	There will not be an effective justice system if money continues to be spent without regard to the effectiveness with which it is spent. The background to that point is the Carter report on prisons, which had no evidential base at all, but which led to far-reaching conclusions, including the plan to create massive, Titan prisons, into which no cost-benefit analysis has been conducted.
	Interestingly, having reported that the consultation was over, the Government have now told our Committee that it is not really over, as they intend to do some further work, owing to the fact that so many of the people who were consulted pointed to the lack of a cost-benefit analysis. I am glad that the Government have changed tack, at least to the extent of giving the issue some further thought, and I would be the last person to complain if they changed their mind. I hope that they will now look much more carefully into the cost-effectiveness of the proposal, which has never been examined on any research or evidence base at all.
	If we spend lots of money on creating more prisons, but at the same time send out unrehabilitated, unsupervised or unsupported prisoners, there will be more crimes and more victims of crime. If we spend on prisons money that is needed for early-years intervention, youth work or community sentences, there will be more criminals and more victims. We therefore need to look at all the money that we spend in the criminal justice system and at whether it is being spent effectively.
	Our report Towards Effective Sentencing, from the 2007-08 Session, deals with some of those issues and demonstrates the ways in which money was wasted when sentences were introduced without any proper mechanism for carrying them out and without any certainty that they would meet the requirements of the justice system. We are now doing further work on the much wider concept of justice reinvestment: are we spending the money in the right places; if we spent it differently, would there be fewer crimes and fewer victims?
	We are very conscious of the need for an informed public and media debate that is not just based around a few cases. The Front Benchers of all parties need to help in bringing about such a debate. Instead of chasing tough on crime headlines, we should ensure that the public are able to debate in an informed way what methods will ensure that they are least likely to be the victims of crime. We should not be misleading the public into thinking that we have a solution if all we propose is simply putting more people in prison and keeping them there for longer.
	There are many public misconceptions about crime. All the evidence shows that the public believe that crimes are more frequent than they actually are and that sentences are more lenient than they actually are. As long as that is the case, the public will be prey to both newspaper headlines and populist rhetoric suggesting that there is an easy solution to a massive problem of increasing crime in the form of opening more prisons and cramming more people into themwhen that is clearly not the case.
	We have the highest prison rate among any of the major countries of western Europeand not just marginally higher, but by far. Yet that has not enabled us to have a different and more successful record on crime and the prevention of crime than those countries have had. We see a strong need for a much more informed public debate and we look to the leaders of all the parties to contribute to it and to resist the temptation to grab a current case and the public fears generated by it and say, Ah, this proves that we must have more prisons or longer sentences. Although long sentences are necessary and appropriate in a few cases, they are not the answer to general crime problems.

David Burrowes: Is the justice reinvestment inquiry that the Select Committee is undertaking, in which I take a particular interest, relevant not just to an informed debate among politicians but to the lack of local community involvement and ownership of issues such as youth justice and, indeed, financial decision-making, not least in the area of commissioning of prison places?

Alan Beith: The hon. Gentleman is on to a very important point. Our system does not locate in one place, either nationally or locally, decisions about how money is spent. The decisions are taken by different people: some take decisions that result in more prisons, but others are taking decisions on where the money is spenton youth work, early intervention or community sentences in particular areas, for example. The structure of financial decision making is an absolutely essential issue and the Committee is taking a close interest in it.
	Some things are, of course, missing from the Queen's Speech: some I am sorry are not in it; others I am pleased are not in it. I shall take an example of each. The Queen's Speech lacks the announcement of an effective Bill on party funding. What we have instead is a trundling on with the wholly inadequate Bill that we started considering in the previous Session. What we need is a Bill based on the lines of the Hayden Phillips report and the work of the Select Committee in bringing Members of all parties together to reach a common conclusion that we must get the big money out of politics and accept that all parties would have to make some sacrifices to reach that point. We would then need to create a system to incentivise the giving of money to political parties in small amounts by larger numbers of people as part of their ownership of the political system. That is, of course, precisely what Barack Obama succeeded in doing in the United States. Much of the vast amount of money raised for his campaign came in small donations from very large numbers of people. Unless we do that, we will not be able to deliver what we said was necessary: to offer the taxpayer visibly cleaner and healthier politics. That will not even be begun by the Government's proposed legislation. The Government have surrendered to a veto by one party, and the Bill that was reintroduced this week will do nothing to change the dependence of the system on big donors.

Charles Walker: The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about party fundraising. Why does politics excite people in the United States of America in a way that it is simply not exciting people in this country?

Alan Beith: It is probably mainly to do with a perception that there was a need for change and a means to bring it about. We must all hope that the election of Barack Obama and his Administration satisfies some of those aspirations, which led people to take part. It may not so fully do so, as that is difficult to achieve. In our system, many people assume that nothing they do will make any difference. They have seen the two main parties grow rather more similar in recent years in the ideas and prescriptions that they put forward. That might change againwho knows?
	People have seen a system in which their votes do not seem to countthat point was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne)because of the electoral system that we have, but the crucial difference is that when people see that their votes make a difference, they are more likely to vote.
	I was elected to the House in a by-election 35 years ago last month. The turnout was 84 per cent. and the poll took place well on in the year, when the register was quite old. My majority was 57 votes. People knew that the by-election was close. They could see that their vote was crucial to achieving change. Unless we can get more of our electorate to feel that their vote will change not just perhaps the personnel but the direction of government, we will continue to have low participation.
	The next thing that is missing but might have been expected in the Gracious Speech is any reference to legislation on the Bill of Rights and responsibilities. Instead, we have, in that time-honoured phrase, the Government taking a step back from what they originally intended to do:
	My Government will continue to take forward proposals on constitutional renewal.
	So no Bill on rights and responsibilities. I am quite pleased about that, because there is a deal of confusion around that subject in Government circles, and some other circles as well.
	There is the idea that we can somehow change our corpus of rights by introducing a separate British Bill of Rights. I am very sceptical of that notion. We are signatories to the European convention on human rights, and even if we repealed the Human Rights Act 1998 and stopped our access to it in our own courts, we would still be signatories to that convention and the process involving the DNA database casewhich everybody, certainly on the Opposition Benches, is celebrating today and which has led to a decision that the Government's position is not lawfulwould still be available to us. Although it is advantageous that we can access the convention in the British courts, the European convention will determine our rights for many years to come. I see danger in any pretence that we can subtract from those rights. Some Conservatives seem to think that we can do soalthough we cannot unless we withdraw from the conventionor that we can usefully start tinkering around, adding a few extra rights and giving them the same force. I am not even comfortable with that, either.
	At the same time, the Government confuse the notion of responsibilities with rights. In making what is, on the face of it, a reasonable proposition that people should care about their responsibilities as well as their rightsa proposition that we could all agree tothey go on to imply that all of that could be put into a piece of legislation or a charter so that rights and responsibilities had the same status. That is nonsense, and quite dangerous nonsense too.
	There are certain responsibilities to keep the law, which if we do not carry out we lose rights. We may be sent to prison because we have broken the criminal law, but we cannot have a process whereby we start taking people's rights away if they do not exercise as much social responsibility as is desirable or because, on some subjective measure, they are not behaving as responsibly as we would like.
	I want people to do socially responsible thingsnot just in the negative sense of not doing bad things, but in the positive sense of taking an active part in their community, helping community organisations and being involved in all sorts of good things such as charitable work. I am absolutely delighted that so much of that goes on in our country, but I simply cannot get my head around the idea that if people do not behave to the fullest extent of responsibility that they could achieve, we may somehow treat that as a rights issue, saying, You haven't helped with the scout troop, so you will lose a bit of freedom of speech. You haven't stood for the parish council, so you will lose some of your freedom of association. Those two things are very different. Social responsibility is something that we can encourage and try to develop in society. Rights are something that we make subject to a framework of law and justiciable, and one cannot mix up the two concepts as the Government are doing. I am quite pleased that we will not see that in the Queen's Speech.
	Instead we have a vague and, from this Government, unlikely notion of strengthening Parliament. There is one specific measure that the Government can cite as likely to achieve that: the powers in relation to war and peacethe parliamentary process when this country goes to war. That is right in principle and, in the case of Iraq, actually happened. As one of those who voted against the Iraq war, I must recognise that we did have a vote in this House about it, but the idea that that will strengthen Parliament is a bit fanciful. As we all know from that and other experiences, many Members feel pressured by the fact that our troops are stationed and ready to take action into not voting against what the Government are doing. Others feel that if they vote against their Government in those circumstances they are effectively calling on them to resign at the most difficult period for the country for any Government to resign. The measure is right in principle but it does not really add to the corpus of real parliamentary power.
	Among the things that would change Parliament is a reformed electoral system that did not give Governments automatic majorities and made it much less likely that Governments had the kind of majority that enabled them to ignore Parliament, and that stopped the Government's stranglehold on the House. We now have more Ministers than ever before. We have lots of unpaid Ministers. We used to talk about the payroll but we now have Ministers who are prepared to take on the loyalty and limitations of being in government without even being paid a ministerial salary for doing so. There are now quite a lot of them, but the total effect is to add to the number of people on the Government side of the House who are automatically committed to supporting the Government unless they resign their office.

Charles Walker: The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House for 35 years. Was it not the case that, 35 years ago, being a Parliamentary Private Secretary did not put a Member on the payroll vote, and there were occasions when PPSs from both sides of the House voted against the Government and retained their positions?

Alan Beith: I still think and hope that PPSs will vote against the Government from time to time and might survive in office for doing so, but throughout that 35-year period, the size of Government within the Chamber has increasedan undesirable development. I think it fairly unlikely that the Government will achieve much in the way of strengthening Parliament for the reasons that I have set out.
	The Government should also bear in mind the importance of supporting the role of MPs. If the Government are worried about leaks, they have themselves to blame. First, they have failed to bring in a civil service Bill which could strengthen the civil service code, and secondly, they have set the tone with their own leaks. The very Government who complain about leaks are filling the newspapers with things that in my early days in Parliament were practically hanging offences. Revealing the contents of the Queen's Speech before the Queen uttered it was regarded as a very serious matter indeed in my earlier years. As for the contents of a Budget, for those to be revealed was a resigning matter for the Chancellor.

Jack Straw: I do not think we can be criticised on the Queen's Speech because one of the reforms introduced by the Prime Minister was a draft Queen's Speech, which could be the subject of proper scrutiny.

Alan Beith: I accept that reform and supported it at the time, but we are seeing the playing around with the Gracious Speech itself. Once the Government have made their undisclosed decisions about what they are taking forward and what they are not, following the consultation process that the Prime Minister rightly introduced, the newspapers on Tuesday and Wednesday tell us what the Queen will say, Her Majesty delivers the speech and then, on the middle of Wednesday, the Government set about another kind of leaking: they indicate that what the Queen said was not terribly important, and that what was really important was the repossessions initiative, which was announced to the press before Parliament, and certainly in more detail than it was announced to Parliament by the Prime Minister.

Christopher Huhne: My right hon. Friend will remember that when in opposition the Prime Minister was very proud of using leaked documents from the civil service to hold the Government to account. In fact, on Newsnight earlier this week there was a rather glorious clipdating back to July 1985, I thinkof a very young Gordon Brown claiming the credit for doing exactly that.

Alan Beith: Yes; what a young figure the Prime Minister cut, but we all remember him in those days.
	Clearly, all Governments have to ensure that they can conduct their business, but they now do so within a framework of freedom of information, where they need to be a little less sensitive about information, much of which could be claimed as public under the Freedom of Information Act in any case. When situations arise that are to do with the leaking of confidential information, the basis for dealing with them should be the civil service code, buttressed by a civil service Act.
	While making no comment on the current case, it is my view that if a Member were to take action that seemed to be designed to extract information from a civil servant by putting pressure on them, that would be a matter for parliamentary standards. That would be the appropriate way to deal with that, rather than through the criminal code. When Douglas Hurd was Home Secretary, he introduced substantial changes so that the criminal code was more properly confined to official secrets in the area of national security, and disciplinary processes other than the criminal law were thought appropriate for the rest of Government business. That was an important change which was enshrined in a revised Official Secrets Act. Having served on the Intelligence and Security Committee for more than a decade, I am well aware of the importance of safeguarding national security and of rigorous protection of the secrecy on which it depends, but that has also reinforced in my mind the importance of distinguishing between that and the protection of the Government's ability to hold discussions. That is a significant point, and it involves issues such as freedom of information and the sort of processes that have occasionally brought to light matters that needed to be brought to light, embarrassing as they were to the Government.
	Let me make one last comment on the current situation, since it is germane to the justice and home affairs section of the Queen's Speech debate and to the issues that occupied us yesterday and earlier today in relation to the rights of Members of Parliament and their constituents. We will do ourselves a considerable disservice if we politicise the discussion of how we protect the privileges of Members and their constituents, and of Members and those who bring important information to them. I have detected several dangers in that regard. I have seen no evidence suggesting that Ministers did anything more than press the button of complaint that there were too many leaks going on in their Department, and once that button was pressed processes began, leading ultimately to arrest and a search in this place, which are causing us a great deal of anxiety. If there is evidence to the contrary, that may be disproved, but my initial perception is that, despite what some have speculated, Ministers have not engaged in any more detailed involvement than to say, Can nobody rid me of this turbulent priest? To concentrate on actions that Ministers probably did not take unwisely politicises the issue.
	Similarly, however, the Government must look very carefully at how they are handling the matter, including the motion that the House will debate on Monday, because if they move to the kind of defensive position I have heard in some of the comments from the Labour Benches and seek to narrow the ability of this House to assert, within proper limits, the privileges and rights on which our constituents depend, we will do a great disservice to Parliament. The House needs to find a way of acting together to assert and protect the right of constituents and others to bring before Parliament matters which Parliament needs to know.

Ann Cryer: I have an agreement to look after grandchildren from 6 o'clock, so I did not prepare a speech for this debate because I did not think I would be able to be present for the wind-ups, which I know we should be. However, it appears likely that the debate might not last the full course, so I will be able to do my duty both to this House and to the grandchildren.
	I would like to discuss certain aspects of the Gracious Speech. The borders, immigration and citizenship Bill will touch on changes to nationality law to implement the new paths to citizenship. I noticed that this morning,  The Times mentioned that those who did not achieve citizenship might be sent back. I think that the journalist got it wrong, because he does not seem to understand that once someone has obtained indefinite leave to remain, they cannot just be shoved back to wherever they came from.
	I am very committed to the need for immigrants, particularly those who have indefinite leave to remain and those who have not yet reached that stage, to have a grasp of, and ability to use, English. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), who has now left the Chamber, has said, the best way to provide English for speakers of other languagesESOLis through colleges of further education. UnfortunatelyI can understand why this happenedvarious Ministers in the relevant Department decided that the cost of teaching English as a second language was going through the ceiling, and as they were afraid that it might take over the Department, and cuts would have to be made in other areas, they put a cap on ESOL spending.
	I accepted that at the time, but I am becoming increasingly anxious about it, because now that people have to have English in order to obtain indefinite leave to remainand, further down the line, citizenshipthere is a growing cottage industry providing certificates so that people can obtain those things. I am not knocking private provision, because some of the private providers of ESOL are perfectly good, charge reasonable amounts and give a good service. Such providers are well organised and give a number of lessons to people, mainly women, who have no English.
	Unfortunately, an increasing number of rogue operators are just giving a one-day course. The idea that someone can learn how to use English and obtain knowledge of it in one day is absurd. These rogue operators are charging knock-down prices, and that is putting some of the adequate providers out of business, and putting many of our immigrant communities at risk. People are not learning English on these courses; they are just getting a certificate to say that they have English. That means that young women who live in some communities in my constituency do not know their rights, because they do not know English, and they cannot pass on English to their children before they go to school.
	This situation has all sorts of negative aspects, so I am as keen as I always have been for communities to have a good grasp of English. Sadly, many women in my constituency who have been in this country for 30-odd years do not have a word of English. We will never reach any form of integration or cohesion in our northern towns and cities until we have a common language. We should therefore examine the provision of ESOL if we are still going to insist on English for citizenship and indefinite leave to remain.

David Drew: I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept, because she knows this only too well, that one of the saddest aspects of this is the fact that some effective courses put on by the trade union movement were the ones that were peremptorily cut. Surely they should be reintroduced, because they are an effective way of reaching people when they most need it.

Ann Cryer: I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent contribution. As he says, the trade unions were helping a great deal in that respect.
	May I touch on the coroners and justice Bill, which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has just discussed in great detail? I want to discuss an idea that I have had. I visited Canada with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association about 18 months ago. We met the chief of police for Toronto, who has a great belief in restorative justice, and I believe that, with our prisons bursting, perhaps we ought to consider that idea.
	I know that there are existing systems of restorative justice in this country, but I wonder whether we could extend them, because of what we heard from the Toronto police chief. He is very keen on the idea. Restorative justice does not come cheapit is expensivebut he said that reoffending rates for those who had gone through the restorative justice system were down to 30 or 35 per cent., which is wonderful. That example can be compared with the reoffending rates for those who go to prison, which I think are at about 80 per cent., although I stand to be corrected.
	The policing and crime Bill will protect particularly vulnerable members of our society, including women and children. We must start to look at the provision of madrassahs. Anyone can teach in a madrassah without a criminal records check. I have a personal interest, because about a year ago I was invited to join a trust attached to Keighley Cougars rugby league club. The trust provides out-of-school sporting activities, particularly in rugby league, for children, including girls. It makes money and then spends it on the children. I was invited to be a member of that trust, and because it deals with the provision of facilities for children, I had to have a criminal records vettingand I had to pay for iteven though I never see those children. The Criminal Records Bureau did a check on me and found that I was perfectly all right, but I had to pay for that.
	I never come across those children, yet when it comes to the madrassahs in Keighleysome are perfectly satisfactory, some are less sothe people who work in them, who have day-on-day contact with children, because madrassahs usually run six days a week, do not have to undergo a CRB check. We will have to look into that. The madrassahs are growing in number and influence and we must be careful. At the moment, we, as a Government, are discriminating against Muslim children. They do not have the same level of protection as children who go to Brownies, Cubs or Sunday schoolin those cases, the people who look after the children must have CRB checks.
	Finally, may I just mention the Political Parties and Elections Bill? I am rather concerned because canvassing by local authorities to put people on to electoral registers seems to be really patchy. In some areas, canvassers go knocking door-to-door, people are asked to fill in the form and they are put on the register. Then there are the other areas, such as Bradford. I have never come across a canvasser for the electoral register in the Bradford area. The most basic aspect of our democracy is to get people on to the register. Perhaps the Government ought to encourage local authorities to spend a bit more money on employing canvassers at this time of year, when we are compiling new registers, to ensure that everyone is registered.
	The recently introduced system of making postal votes available to everyone is not doing much service for many women in my constituency. Postal votes are obtained for the household andcertainly in my local Pakistani communityDad fills in the form without reference to his daughters. I have had complaints from such women that they are being excluded from voting because of that system. They have asked me to make the point that the provision of postal votes has become too widespread, and is discriminating against them. We should consider individual registration, which may address many of those problems.
	I am sorry that this has been a speech of bits and bobs, but as I said, I had not intended to speak in this debate.

Fiona Mactaggart: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) and her concerns about electoral registration. I have the same problem in my constituency, with postal votes meaning that that ballot is not private in some families, and the people who lose their independence as a result are usually women. In my constituency, we have also seen a corruption of the electoral register, which has been exposed in a legal case and reflects fundamental flaws in the system. The Bill now before Parliament does not take such matters sufficiently seriously.
	The main issues that I wish to address have been influenced by what has happened in my constituency in the past 10 days as a series of incidents has shocked the people of Slough. About 100 yds from a poster saying Slough against knife crimethe day before I had had my photograph taken in front of ita woman was murdered and another person seriously wounded with a knife. That was probably related to a domestic incident. A couple of days later, the deputy mayor of Slough was shot, probably with a crossbow. Just a couple of days ago, a woman who was clearing the ice off her car was run over by someone who was trying to steal it.
	All those incidents happened within days of each other in my constituency. I can tell my constituents that their chances of being the victim of crime is lower now than at any time in the last 20 years, and that is truebut such incidents make them profoundly fearful about the rarest of crimes. Neighbourhood action groups are an important way for the community to express their concerns about crime to the police, and they are most worried about parking, criminal damage, graffiti and kids hanging about the streets, not the sort of incidents I have described. Those are the issues that get brought up, because they are more common in a community than the more violent ones that I have described, but the latter can create profound fear, and it is important to ask ourselves whether we are doing enough to deal with that.
	One of the things that would helpthis is not a matter for legislationis faster progress on the outer London allowance for police officers, so that the Metropolitan police stop stealing our officers. I have become a bore about that issue, but it is a serious matter for my constituency.
	Another thing that would help is effective punishment when people are convicted of crimes. I was glad to welcome the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary to my constituency earlier this week. My right hon. Friends came as part of the relaunch of the scheme that means that people who are sentenced to serve community sentences can be seen to be serving them. I am confident that that will mean that instead of 12 young lads leaning on rakes and not doing very much in the local parkI know why they are there, but most of the general public probably think that their taxes are paying for them to be therethey can be made to do something other than lean on their rakes. Effective community sentencing is absolutely critical, but we need to deal with other kinds of sentence too.
	I am depressed about the slow progress being made on the Corston report. Women are, overwhelmingly, not violent offenders, yet they are disproportionately sentenced to jail, which is very ineffective in changing their behaviour and rehabilitating them. Jailing a mother is likely to create a future generation of criminals, so I hope that there will be faster progress on that matter in future.
	Another crime that we have experienced in Slough over the past year is people trafficking. One of the few convictions in Britain for child trafficking was in my constituency. I am glad that the police and the prosecution authorities took the matter seriously. When I talked to those involved it was clear to me that people trafficking has become the preferred profiteering mechanism for organised crime, over and above drug trafficking. It is more profitable. It is horrifying that a child is worth 100,000 a year to their trafficker for doing nothing more than begging and selling  The Big Issue. I am referring to a real case. In a year, the controller of the child made that amount of profit from the child.
	We have to bear down more comprehensively and effectively on people trafficking, which is one of the reasons why I was glad to hear of the Home Secretary's commitment to sign the convention very soon. However, we need more effective policing, so I was disappointed to learn that the Metropolitan police, having taken taxpayers' money to open a trafficking policing centre, decided to pocket the moneyas far as I could seeand close it again. How were the Metropolitan police able to get away with that? A real issue of accountability is involved. The Queen's Speech talked of improving the accountability of policing, but on a matter on which I believe the whole House is united

Jack Straw: It may help my hon. Friend if I deal with that issue, which was also raised by an Opposition speaker. There was a funding issue in connection with the continuation of the human trafficking unit in the Metropolitan police. However, I am happy to report to the House that it has been resolved for the forthcoming financial year, by agreement, to fund the unit jointly between the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police Service. Meanwhile, an urgent review is being carried out so that future funding is assured.

Fiona Mactaggart: I am glad to hear that. None the less, the matter raises the issue of the accountability of the Metropolitan police. I shall say more about police accountability because, with respect to the Justice Secretary, it sounds to me as though we have just been experiencing a bit of brinkmanship. The Metropolitan police decided they wanted to up the ante and get a bit more money from the Home Office, so they did what people do when they want more money from their paymasters, and threatened to shut something they really cared about. It sounds to me as if that is what happened, and I am concerned about some of the police accountability proposals in the Queen's Speech, because I think we shall see more of that kind of stuff.
	Under the proposed new methods for police accountability, there will be real concern and argument about operational mattersas we saw in the House todayand the police will be constantly looking over their shoulder. There will also be more of the brinkmanship that I describedand I should be grateful for reassurance that that will not happen.
	On the general issue of people trafficking, the other group who are most at risk are women trafficked for sexual purposes. One of the reasons why that becomes more possible is the commodification of sex, which has become quite common in a number of areas, two of which the Queen's Speech proposes to deal withand both of which I profoundly welcome.
	The first area is lap dancing. It is extraordinary that the lap-dancing industry can claim that it does not represent sexual-encounter establishments. In my understanding, there is more sexual encounter in a lap-dancing club than in any of the bookshops and sex toy shops that require such a licence. I am very glad indeed thatthis is rather late, but it is very welcomeit is proposed to require such premises to be licensed as sexual-encounter establishments. Although quite legal, those establishments profoundly exploit young women, who usually have to pay for the right to work in them, pay for their uniforms and pay for their drinks. As a result, they can end up out of pocket after an evening's work, and their managers deliberately ensure that there are more dancers than customers, in a way that creates gross exploitation of women.
	The same kind of context creates the exploitation of women who are being sold for sexual services through prostitution. I am glad that the proposal in the Queen's Speech is to focus not on those women, who are so often victimised, but much more on their customers, and to create a strict liability offence that is parallel to a number of other offences in Britain. If someone is driving with bald tyres, they are committing a strict liability offence. Even if someone did not know that their tyres were bald, it need only be proved that they were driving the car, and that the tyres were bald, to show that they were responsible. Again, if someone employs someone who does not have the right to work, the employer is committing a strict liability offence. In my view, it should be exactly the same, at the least, for prostitution.
	I hope that in this case, we do not fall into the trap that some other European countries, such as Finland, have fallen into, where prosecutions have not taken place. I feel that targeting the purchaser is the best way to protect women. I hold that view not because of any piousness about selling sexual services, but because I believe that prostitution, as it is practised, represents a gross example of violence against women. Between 1996 and 2003, 72 women prostitutes were murdered in Britain. Most of them were selling themselves on the street. More have been murdered since. If we enforce the new proposals, it will be a fitting memorial to Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell, all of whom were murdered so recently in Ipswich.
	We should follow those other countries that have ensured that the target is the purchaser. That is the trend now. Some Opposition Members would suggest that we need to regularise and legalise the whole trade. But in countries that have done that, such as the Netherlands, the trade has grown, and more women are subjected to violence as a consequence. It is no accident that Nevada, which has the most legal prostitution of any state in the United States of America, also has the highest homicide rate for women. But I urge the Home Office, while targeting the punter, to remove the legal offences that women who are in prostitution are prosecuted for. The Government should get rid of the term, common prostitute. They should get rid of criminal sanctions for soliciting. Women should not be fined or jailed for soliciting, because many of them are controlled. Arguably, they should get rid of the practice of prosecuting two women who work together for brothel-keeping, because in those circumstances, we could put the responsibility where it truly lies. If the logic of the Home Secretary's position is that the responsibility is the client's, exploited women should not be criminalised. If they were not, they would be much more likely to report the violent punters who are every day, in every town, raping, hitting and damaging women in prostitution. Until we can make those women safe, the steps that have been announced are insufficient.

Paul Holmes: Does the hon. Lady agree that there is a danger that if the Government pass the law on strict liability for the customers of sex workers, that will be all that is done? If the law is not enforced, the whole thing will fail. The lessons to be learned from the police and social services operation in Ipswich, from Pentameter 1 and 2 and from the Met's special unit on trafficking, are that if we put the resources and effort into enforcing the existing laws that make trafficking illegal, we can have an effect. If we simply pass more lawsseveral speakers this afternoon have talked about the legislative diarrhoea of passing more and more laws but not enforcing themwe will not achieve anything.

Fiona Mactaggart: If we put effort behind any law, it will work better. That is obvious. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we could do that, but I have spoken to people who are involved in the prostitution scene in Ipswich, and although they have managed effectively to end street prostitution in Ipswich using current laws, and with superhuman effort, they would generally welcome the kind of initiative proposed. They would also welcome greater clarity concerning their ability to target demand, because they have been able to protect women in Ipswich more effectively by focusing on demand.
	Those people provided exit support and better nurturing to women who were in prostitution, and helped them to leave prostitution. They used some of the pressure mechanisms that still exist for women who were trying hard to stay in prostitution, but they could have done with more effective powers. That is exactly why countries such as Lithuania, Finland and South Korea have introduced such legislation. In almost every case, the trigger point was women's deaths. In South Korea, 14 women died in a fire in a brothel because the brothel-keeper had locked the doors so that people could not get out from inside, but could get in from outside. The Swedish law that prohibits the purchase of sexual services was introduced following the murder of a woman prostitute. If we followed our partner countries, we could make women safer.
	On the immigration proposals in the Bill, I am anxious that the probationary citizenship proposals and the permanent residence proposals that will substitute for the current, fairly clear, route to indefinite leave to remain are much more contingent on certain issues. As a consequence, people might have insecure status for longer, which might allow them to be exploited. I am concerned about that lack of clarity, as clarity has always been a good part of Britain's immigration law compared with other European countries, where people's status might be a bit insecure for rather a long time.
	In Britain, it has been fairly clear where such people are on the ladder, and when they have reached a particular point, they have known that they had indefinite leave to remain and that they could apply for citizenship. The new law is much less clear and depends much more on short-term changes in the immigration rules. That will create the kind of insecurity, for communities, that we have previously avoided by the clarity in our immigration law. That would be unwelcome. I would be glad if my anxiety about that could be proved unfounded, and I would like to know what proposals are in train to ensure that people are clear and confident about their status.
	I want to finish by making another complaintI am sorry about that. I welcome the things that we are doing; it is just the details that make me frustrated. My final complaint is about the proposals for the cohesion fund, or whatever it is to be called. It is a surcharge on immigration fees in order to help local communities to deal with the consequences of migration. The local community in Slough is an obvious example of a place that needs such help. We have had a 10 per cent. increase in the birth rate, and we are expecting 11 new primary classes, but we only have the money for two. We could use the whole of the fund, and still need more. That is part of the problem with the fund: it will raise expectations but fail to fulfil them.
	There is worse, however. The people who cannot be charged under the proposals are EU citizens, and many of the recent arrivals have been from the EU. Those who will be eligible for the charge are therefore the wives, husbands and children of long-term residents, many of whom are British citizens, who are already paying hundreds of pounds for their visas. A wife will pay more than 1,000 for her visa and application for permanent residence; a child will pay 515. On top of that, there is now to be a surcharge. That action in itself will damage race relations. It will place an unfair burden on our ethnic minority communities, and the tension that already exists between different minorities in Britain will be exacerbated by the charge. I urge the Home Office to think again. I believe that the proposal is well meant, and that it is designed to help places such as Slough to deal with the real challenges that they face, but I do not believe that people have researched its consequences, which could be profoundly damaging to race relations in the town that I represent.

David Drew: I appreciate having the opportunity to speak at this relatively late hour. Not having heard all the introductory Front-Bench speeches, I shall be circumspect, but I want to make a couple of points nevertheless.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) talked about the trafficking of women for sexual services. I remember having some quite acrimonious correspondence about that with one of my constituents recently. His view was that the proposals were unnecessary, that they represented more ineffective law and that it was wrong to go after the men. I am tempted to send a copy of my hon. Friend's speech to him, so that he can understand the gravity of the situation and the need to do something about this heinous crime, as I described it in my letter to him; that did not go down terribly well, but it was nevertheless my opinion. These activities are too hidden and out of the way, so far as people's general understanding is concerned. Some people think that they do not need to be dealt with, but of course they do.
	I want to make a couple of quick observations on the overall perspective of the Queen's Speech, followed by some comments that are pertinent to home affairs and justice. There are some appealing Bills in the Queen's Speech. I very much welcome our attempt to put into a legislative framework our desire to remove child poverty. I am also pleased to see the ongoing rationale for local economic development and community regeneration. I am particularly pleased, as I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House in business questions earlier, to see that the marine Bill and the new coastal access arrangements are to be brought into statute. There were those who said that that was never going to happen, and that every Government put such measures on the back burner where they would never see the light of day. I am pleased to see that they are going to see the light of day, and I congratulate the Government in that regard.
	It would be helpful if we could make rapid progress on the floods and water Bill, which was the subject of the second part of my question to my right hon. and learned Friend. The Bill should receive early pre-legislative scrutiny so that it does not have to wait the full parliamentary cycle. Some of us have constituents who cannot afford to wait that long.
	On home affairs and justice, one is tempted to say, Here we go again. The Government have legislated regularly on these topics. I shall examine some aspects of the criminal justice system, rather than the legislation per se. Next week is justice week and a number of us will address various justice trade unions on Wednesday to talk about some of the issues that they raise with us. I make no apology for using that as the backcloth for a discussion about where we have got to and some of the concerns that will be expressed to us next week in the context of the trade union approach to justice.
	The Police Federation, the National Association of Probation Officers and the Prison Officers Association are important representative bodies that we must take along with us when we make changes. I have been lobbied by a number of them. I would have been lobbied last Friday by Unison about some of the changes to the probation service, but unfortunately it was unable to make the meeting.
	My starting point is that there is at least concern across the terrain about some of the budgetary arrangements affecting probation in particular and other aspects of justice. The probation service's budget has stood still for at least a couple of years. There are those who would say, and I cannot disclaim these figures, that there is effectively a 25 per cent. cut. It is good to hear that we still want to use community payback. I may have my views on whether wearing nice DayGlo-coloured uniforms is the best way to get people to behave, but it is important that we recognise that those people are demonstrably working in the community in a way that brings it home to our constituents that there are different forms of justice, besides sending people to prison.
	If there are substantial cuts in the probation service budget, one must ask who will supervise community payback and who will ensure that the work undertaken by offenders is properly constituted, measured and scrutinised and that proper outcomes are achieved. This is not to do with legislation per se, but if we do not have the structure of the justice system right, and we do not provide an appropriate budget, it is impossible to pretend that that system can work properly. I raise the issue of the budget and how much money we are spending, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice may want to say something about how the new legislation will pan out if the money is not available to invest properly in that area.
	Most of that budget goes on people, because of course it is people who supervise offenders and who work in prisons to keep offenders in prison. Anyone who knows anything about the probation service knows that it is an ageing service. I am told that over the next three years a substantial number of probation officers will retire, which means that even if we are spending money on recruitment, we must spend considerably more to have an impact on the service. We need to recruit appropriately in order to have skilled people to take on the work of those who have retired.
	I am talking about the future. We go on about restorative justice and some of the ideas such as community payback. However, those ideas cannot come to fruition if there are not sufficient people to run the services. I take an interest in this issue, and the probation service in my area has been through some turmoil of late. Our acting chief probation officer has just left, and I wish every success to the new one, who starts in January. As I say, there has been turmoil in the service in respect of knowing who is running it.
	Again, that is against the background of the National Offender Management Service, and some Labour Members have yet to be convinced that NOMS is the great salvation of the probation service. There is no secret about the fact that most in the probation service still feel belittled at being lumped in with NOMS. Perhaps that was a whizzo managerial idea, but at the end of the day it is the probation officers working on the ground who really make the difference. If there is unhappiness among those staff about NOMS and its structures, we must at least listen to them.
	My concluding point is about legislation, budgets and people, and how they can make the future of the criminal justice system even more difficult. It would be good to hear that we are giving a period of stability to the justice system so that at least some of the wider questions had time to be answered and some of the changes that took place in yesteryear could be properly evaluated to see whether they were working. However, the changes can work only if the budgets are in place. I make a plaintive pleanot surprisingly, it is universally welcomed by unions that work in this areanot only for stability, but for a budget to ensure that the changes introduced in the past have time to work through.
	As I said, there are difficulties in getting to the bottom of the figures in respect of what we really know about the budgetary expenditure. It would help if there were a debatean Adjournment debate, perhapsto look at how the probation service is working within the wider criminal justice system. I hope that we will get clarity. I am not necessarily against change, which may be for the better, but I am against change that cannot work because it does not have the allied expenditure to ensure that there is forward movement, so that there is better provision and offenders are properly treated and so that our constituents know that the criminal justice system is getting better. We have to invest in the service to ensure that that is the case.

Andrew MacKinlay: I shall not keep the House for too long, but I would like to comment on a number of aspects relating to this afternoon's theme and the Gracious Speech.
	I estimate that 55 to 60 per cent. of my casework relates to asylum, refugee and immigration issues. That is quite a heavy burden. My assistant, who has been with me since I was elected to this House nearly 17 years ago, has worked miracles with the Home Office on behalf of many constituents. I pay tribute to him, because it has been a big burden and our successes in breaking through red tape and so on are often rewarding. Like so many other hon. Members' assistants, my assistant Carl Morris does much of the nitty-gritty work, and I acknowledge that now in the House.
	It frustrates those of us with a high ratio of such work when we still see the bureaucracy, inertia and inefficiency of the Border and Immigration Agency on a number of issues. For balance, I want to say that things have improved. I welcome the fact that for some time now we have had a uniformed border and immigration service. That has had an enormous impact. I still think that we should beef it up into a proper border police force, but I am grateful for the current position, which is a marked improvement.
	However, there is still a long way to go. I urge the Justice Secretary to use his good offices to put pressure on Whitehall for better performance, because there is room for enormous improvement in several respects. Earlier today, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) put in a bid, which I would like to endorse, in relation to one particular groupZimbabwean refugees. It is plain common sense and in the interests of everyone that this group should be allowed to workI would go on to say that other groups should be given that rightand I would have thought that that could be done with the stroke of a pen. No doubt somebody in Whitehall would find 1,000 reasons why it should not be done, but the Justice Secretary has been in office for long enough to say, Thank you very much, Sir Humphrey. I hear what you saynow this is what we're going to do.

David Drew: My hon. Friend suggests that other pleas could be made, so may I make a plea for Darfuri asylum seekers? They also face a difficult time in this country, particularly because until recently it has not been unknown for them to be interviewed with members of the Sudanese embassy present, which, with the best will in the world, is not necessarily what they would like to happen.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that and pleased that I gave way to him, because my theme is that the situation needs to be continually monitored by Ministers and that common sense should prevail. The Zimbabwean case is overwhelming. However, there are other groups of people who have no realistic prospect of being able to return to their countries but face enormous emotional strain in trying to maintain themselves. I do not want to do any injustice to those very vulnerable groups, but the potential for their carrying out petty crime therefore increases, because they have to survive. I urge the Justice Secretary to tell the House that he will revisit this matter and do what he can to ensure that common sense prevails. It would be in the interests of the United Kingdom, as regards our economy and given the pressures on our social services and welfare expenditure, if they were allowed to work.
	I hope that the Justice Secretary will speak to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about some of the arrangements that are in place. In an overwhelming majority of United Kingdom high commissions and embassies, the quality of the method by which people are processed is very high. However, in one or two instances there are locally engaged companiesprivate firms of security guards and so onwho do not treat people who have gone to consulates appropriately. In some exceptional circumstances, I have deep anxiety about their propriety and conduct. Our high commissioners and ambassadors should be reminded to probe and test that which often happens outside the precincts of their offices, where people are queuing up, to ensure that there are no irregularities and that United Kingdom citizens who are not white are nevertheless treated as United Kingdom citizens. People are sometimes treated in a discriminatory way, not by FCO officials but by those who are employed to marshal the people queuing up to go in. I make these comments in the context of the borders, immigration and citizenship Bill and the draft immigration simplification Bill.
	The Justice Secretary knows that when he was Foreign Secretary I repeatedly pleaded for the United Kingdom to have a mission in Kyrgyzstan. That is relevant because the United Kingdom was recently substantially embarrassed by the fact that its officials in Almaty, the old capital of Kazakhstan, failed to process an application for visas by musicians and performers who had been invited to the United Kingdom by the ambassador of Kyrgyzstan. That was disgraceful and is indicative of the fact that we do not have a proper mission in the capital of Kyrgyzstan. We should have, for a whole variety of reasons, and when we become clumsy in that way, the point I have repeatedly made is underscored.
	The Justice Secretary might reflect on one thing when these Bills are being drafted and prepared. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was Home Secretary, he introduced legislation that dignified the award of United Kingdom citizenship, which was an extremely good thing. Provision was made largely for civic dignitaries, such as the mayor of a council, to award citizenship at a ceremony. I am somewhat jealous about that. Hon. Membersperhaps including you, Madam Deputy Speakerhave actually sponsored, counselled and encouraged people to get British citizenship. I would like the honour of administering or presiding over such a ceremony, and perhaps legislation could be amended, if that is necessary, to include hon. Members in the list of people who can do that. It is with immense pride that we have achieved this outcome, and why should some here today, gone tomorrow mayoralthough some are very goodhave the right to make the award when some of us have seen the process through to that point?

Tom Brake: The hon. Gentleman may need to talk to his local authority about that because I certainly have officiated at a large number of those ceremonies in my constituency. He talks about providing asylum seekers with a right to work, which is an important point. Will he also consider whether they should be allowed to volunteer as well?

Andrew MacKinlay: Of course. I totally endorse what the hon. Gentleman says.
	I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) in her place. I listened carefully to what she said about the madrassahs and clearance checks. I want to say how right she is, and I think that most hon. Members would agree. It is an act of appalling discrimination that these centres are somehow exemptthey are not exempt in law, but nobody is homing in on the problem. That takes place against a backdrop of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and many other ministries being very conscious of the issue. The Church of England has a new code dealing with vicarages and rectories. There has to be separate meeting room space, and it refers to the question of propriety and how people are dealt with or accompanied, plus the checks to which my hon. Friend referred. It is intolerablein the sense that days shall pass from nowthat there is no use of the existing law in respect of those madrassahs. The overriding issue is that children are vulnerable, but the situation is also grossly unfair to the boy scouts and the various churches and organisations that have addressed the problem. I hope that the Justice Secretary will take that matter on.
	On political parties and elections, the Labour Government have tried, with a lot of good intent, to improve our electoral administration, but in many cases we have made things more complicated. Some of us are very disappointed in the performance of the Electoral Commission, and I notice that in the remaining orders and notices, there is a motion to pay the chairman of the Electoral Commission 100,000 a year. I am waiting for that motion to come upI have watched out for it every daybecause I intend to divide the House on the matter. Frankly, I think that 100,000 a year is far too much money. Even if it is a full-time job, that is too much, but I suspect that if we looked at the small print, we would find that it is one of these jobs that take two or three days a week. I would like the Government to reflect on the fact that 100,000 is far too much. I do not want to labour the point, but it is too much, and I am saying, so that everyone knows, that I will divide the House on the matter if I get the opportunity, and I hope that I command some support.
	The list of draft Bills contains a measure on floods and water. I represent Tilbury, which is part of the Thames Gateway, where the Government are properly hoping for and looking to regeneration, quality places for people to live and work, and the creation of skills, especially in my borough of Thurrock. I fully endorse that, but not at any price.
	Anybody who is familiar with the terrain knows that Tilbury was built on the marshes of the Thames. Irish labourers in the 19th century cut the docks and I would describe Tilbury town as Lowry-esque. It has great attractionwe are proud of its traditional docks, which have provided work for more than 120 years. However, between the town and Chadwell St. Mary lies part of the Thames marsh, which fulfils traditional green belt policy. It is a lung and it is attractive against the Lowry-esque landscape. People covet that land and I want to make it clear that Andrew Mackinlay does not support its development. It is vital to the people of Tilbury and Chadwell St. Mary in my borough. Although I support the broad programme of development, I will not support building on that land for a variety of reasonsthe green belt, questions of flooding and irrigation, and compelling water engineering issues. I hope that I would get the Secretary of State's support if there were an appeal.
	I note that there is also a draft communications data Bill. It appears to be primarily designed to regularise matters or provide for the state to marshal information.  [Interruption.] I am told that it is dead. That is disappointing. In any event, my point is that the Justice Secretary, who has overall responsibility for data protection and freedom of information, needs to revisit that in the context of Whitehall. I sent data protection applications across Whitehallto every Ministryin the summer for good reasons. In my applications, I asked for disclosure of anything held on me in relation to my work as a Member of Parliament. That is importantI would not raise the matter if it were purely personal. I wanted to know what the Ministries held.
	Conduct and stewardship of those applications by Ministries was patchy. Some were good and diligent, but others wrote back saying, I don't know who you are. Although I applied on House of Commons headed paper and included a photostat of my passport, some insisted that they did not know who I was.
	There is also a disparity between Departments on charging. There is a power to charge a nominal amountI do not mind that, but the disparity is not good. There should be consistency across government. In some cases, getting the information was like extracting teeth from a whale.
	The worst performer to date is the Cabinet SecretaryI think that his name is Macdonald. He has not replied, despite the 40-day limit. If the Cabinet Secretary cannot get it right, how can we expect proper action down the pyramid and across Whitehall?
	I raise the matter not for myself but for all the others who have submitted applications under the Data Protection Act 1998, which the Justice Secretary piloted through the House when he was Home Secretary, and of which he can justifiably be proud. It is inconsistently applied and needs beefing up. All I ask today is that he examine the matter because amending legislation might be required, but I think that people need a rocket put under them, starting with the Cabinet Secretary.

Nick Herbert: Yesterday we saw the Lord Chancellor, in all his finery, skilfully walking backwards, which he did most expertly. That was entirely appropriate, because retreat has been the story of the Prime Minister's programme on constitutional renewal.
	Back in July last year, when the new Prime Minister made his first statement to the House, he promised a
	national debate...founded on the conviction that the best answer to disengagement from our democracy is to strengthen our democracy.[ Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 819.]
	Constitutional change was not peripheral to the Government's agenda; it was central to their programmefounded on...conviction. That conviction cannot have been very profound, because just 18 months later, the constitutional agenda has all but disappeared. It has become clear that the Prime Minister had no great vision of a new settlement, just the immediate political challenge of dissociating himself from his predecessor.
	The Prime Minister soon discovered that just repeating the word renewal did not renew anything, least of all his reputation. The work of change did not work, so spin doctors were fired and a new purpose was sought. Now the Prime Minister has found a different posture, on the global stageNever mind British democratic renewal; it's time to save the world. A supposed programme for long-term constitutional change has now been cast aside in a second, desperate attempt to establish a new narrative.
	What we are left with is neither reform nor renewal, just tinkering. Eighteen months on from the grand promise, we do not even have a proper constitutional renewal Bill, just an ongoing draft Bill, with an indication that the real thing will be introduced when time allows, and we all know what that means. The Prime Minister said:
	Constitutional change will not be the work of just one Bill or one year or one Parliament.[ Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 815.]
	Now we know what he meant. At this rate, we will not see a constitutional renewal Bill until the next Parliament. We are left with a few draft measures that are worthy enough in their own right, but completely inadequate to address the real problems of public disengagement and imbalance in our political system.
	Last year, the Justice Secretary told us:
	I hope that a consensus can be achieved on the constitutional renewal Bill.[ Official Report, 7 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 148.]
	However, he cannot even find consensus among those on his own Benches. His predecessor, Lord Falconer, said that the Bill was not so much constitutional renewal as constitutional retreat. The Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which was chaired by the right hon. Gentleman's colleague, the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Michael Jabez Foster), said:
	it is difficult to discern the principles underpinning it,
	which is a polite way of saying, It's a dog's breakfast. More than one commentator has described the Bill as a miscellaneous provisions Bill. Professor Adam Tomkins of the university of Glasgow told the Joint Committee that
	to call this Bill a Constitutional Renewal Bill is an exaggeration...of both the terms 'constitutional' and...'renewal'.
	The Bill contains some worthwhile measures, among them the repeal of sections of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which has seen people arrested for reading out the names of the dead at the Cenotaph, but which can apparently do nothing about the permanent encampment that has taken root in Parliament square. Citizens should not have to petition the police for the right to make themselves heard by Parliament. After all, it was the Prime Minister who said last October:
	we can start immediately to make changes in our constitution and laws to safeguard and extend the liberties of our citizens,
	which included
	respecting and extending freedom of assembly.
	With the constitutional renewal Bill still only in draft form, will the Government consider including the provision to deal with the issue of protests in Parliament square in the policing and crime Bill instead, which is at least a real Bill and will be introduced in this Session? Perhaps the Metropolitan police do, after all, have enough to do at Westminster.
	The Justice Secretary is in full constitutional retreat. Last year, he promised to publish a Bill of rights and responsibilities. He travelled round the world talking about it. He delivered learned speeches to academic audiences. He even flew to Washington to tell the new world that he was going to modernise the Magna Carta. Only new Labour could utter that phrase with no sense of irony or endorse its revolting suggestion that all our ancient rights need is a makeover from a spin doctor.
	What has happened to the Bill of Rights? The Justice Secretary's constitutional adviser, Lord Lester, has resigned, saying that the Government's proposals are unworkable. Since none of us has seen the proposals, it is hard to know. Where is the statement of British values? When does the Justice Secretary plan to publish iton the new British day, perhaps? Last March, the Prime Minister said, TodayI emphasise the word todaythe
	Secretary for Justice is consulting throughout the country on a statement of values and on the case for a full British bill of rights.
	After nine months, will the Justice Secretary say how his consultation throughout the country is going? He cannot, of course, because it has not happened.
	The Prime Minister said last year that the consultation would begin in the autumn. In October last year, the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), told the House that he would shortly be announcing it. In November, he said that work was still under way. By February this year, he claimed that the Government were about to launch it; then he said it was launching before Easter. After Easter, they were still finalising the process. In May this year, the Justice Secretary said he would be making an announcement before the summer recess. The build-up to the statement of values is acquiring a tantric quality. The question must be asked how much value the Government believe this statement of values still has.  [Interruption.] I am glad the Home Secretary understood the reference.
	During the debate on last year's Queen's Speech, the Justice Secretary promised us
	All the changes that...the Prime Minister...set out in his historic, first statement.[ Official Report, 7 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 146.]
	So let us have a look at that historic first statement.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly since he was getting into some splendid references to tantric flying and all the rest of it. I wonder about his own position on one particular issuethe British Bill of Rights. Does he agree that a British definition of rights would inevitably call into question our commitment to universal human rights, which we are about to celebrate on 10 December, or, indeed, to the European convention on human rights? Can we not see certain dangers in history where societies have defined rights for their own citizens, but some numbers of those citizens subsequently discover that the rights do not cover them? That is why it is so important to cleave to universal human rights rather than to British rights.

Nick Herbert: No, I disagree. We will all celebrate the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights next week because it was surely a landmark document. It is common ground throughout the House that there is no intention to resile from the European convention, although there is a difference between the Opposition and the Government, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman, about whether a British Bill of Rights should replace the Human Rights Act 1998 or be added to it. I do not see any of the problems that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

Andrew MacKinlay: On the question of the Bill of Rights proposed by the Justice Secretary some time ago, I cannot help feeling that what we want is a reaffirmation of the existing Bill of Rights of 1689 and a reminder to Members of Parliament about the importance of article 9. Under article 9, to quote the previous Clerk, Parliament has comity with the courts. I remember being laughed at when I said that this was the High Court of Parliament, but the Clerk mentioned comity and no Metropolitan police officer would go messing around in the chambers of a court. We are a court, so everyone needs jealously to safeguard article 9and I would hope to have a little teach-in for all MPs about its importance and enduring value.

Nick Herbert: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding us of the important lesson that this Parliament is indeed a court; indeed, it is sometimes said that the House of Commons is the highest court in the land.

Mark Field: Further to that comment and that of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), does my hon. Friend agree that the notion of universal human rights is nonsense? It is simply the accretion of the rights that we have in this countryrights that have been won for us by many generations in the past. That is why we hold those rights so firmly to our hearts. Those are the rights that we are debating now and have been debating over the last 48 hours. It is for that reason that this party has traditionally not wanted to codify a Bill of Rights; and it has certainly always looked askance at the notion of the declaration of universal human rights.

Nick Herbert: My hon. Friend sounds as though he might be a fan of Bentham, who described the idea of natural rights as nonsense upon stilts. I nevertheless believe that the universal declaration has immensely important symbolic value, conceived as it was in the aftermath of war and genocide as a symbol of the determination of the United Nations to ensure that never again should such atrocities take place. The issue for us is to work out whether the current discourse on human rights is devaluing the concept of those great rights that were talked about at that time.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way because he has made precisely the point under discussion. He clearly understands the importance of the universal declaration as Eleanor Roosevelt championed itthat is, precisely in the wake of the holocaust and the genocide, no society should ever again be able to take some of its own citizens and say, You do not have rights that the rest of us have. That is why it is so dangerous to talk about British rights when we should be talking about human rights.

Nick Herbert: The hon. Gentleman might be aware that both sides are talking about not just British rights, but British rights and responsibilities. As we will continue to remain a party to the European convention and as we will remain subscribed to the universal declaration, I do not see that there will be any problem of the kind he sees with a British Bill of Rights and responsibilities better to clarify rights and responsibilities as they apply directly in our legal system.
	I was talking about the Prime Minister's first historic statement on constitutional change and the helpful publication by the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor of a scorecard to show how the Government are getting on with that. The Prime Minister identified 12 important areas in which the Executive will surrender or limit their powers. The first was
	the power of the Executive to declare war.
	The Justice Secretary says that
	a draft resolution was published in the Constitutional Renewal White Paper,
	which is
	currently undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee.
	So, let us put that one down as not done.
	Secondly, the Prime Minister referred to
	the power to request the dissolution of Parliament.
	The Justice Secretary says that
	the proposal is subject to ongoing enquiry.
	Again, it is pending. But I think that I can make him this offer on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron): if the Government want to request a dissolution, I guarantee that the Conservative party will support them.
	Thirdly, the Prime Minister referred to
	the power...to ratify international treaties.
	That is in the still-in-draft Bill on constitutional renewal. Fourthly, he referred to
	the power to restrict parliamentary oversight of our intelligence services.
	The Justice Secretary says that reform is
	in progress...the Government proposes to seek parliamentary endorsement of these proposals.
	So that is another not done.
	Fifthly, the Prime Minister referred to
	power in the appointment of judges.
	That has gone down with the Bill on constitutional renewal as well. Sixthly, he referred to powers over the granting of passports and said that the Government would announce the timetable on that in due course. Seventhly, he referred to powers over
	the granting of pardons.
	A consultation paper has been issued. Eighthly, he referred to
	power to direct prosecutors
	stalled. Ninthly, he referred to
	power over the civil service.[ Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 815-16.]
	That has been arrested. Nine broken promises, and we are in only the third paragraph. Is that what the Prime Minister meant when he talked yesterday about change you can believe in?
	The Justice Secretary went on:
	New rights for the British public to be consulted through 'citizens' juries'.
	Perhaps he can tell us how many citizens juries his Department has held? I can tell himnone.
	Of course, I must be fair about the promises that the Government delivered on: a discussion paper on electoral systems, consultations on weekend elections and lowering the voting age, and consultations on when the Union flag might be flown. The Justice Secretary is mistaking the publication of consultation documents for delivery. What we need is actionaction to give citizens and communities real power over the issues that matter; action to address the West Lothian question; action to restore the integrity of the vote; and action to stop Ministers walking all over Parliament, because for all his talk about strengthening Parliament, this Prime Minister's actions show little but contempt for Parliament and determination to maintain control: expanding the payroll vote, so that almost half his parliamentary party hold a paid or unpaid post in the gift of the Prime Minister.
	There are now 121 Ministers. We had only 74 when we were fighting the second world war. Answers to parliamentary questions are given to friendly journalists before MPs have had a chance to read them. Announcements are trailed in the media before the House is informed and there is routine programming of Bills. With that in mind, when the Government's draft legislative programme was published, we were told that there would be a coroners Bill and a victims and witnesses Bill. Instead, they will now be squeezed into one. I know that the Justice Secretary is serious about parliamentary scrutiny, so could he answer this? Will there be adequate time to scrutinise both parts of this Bill, given that proceedings on recent criminal justice Bills have been disgracefully truncated, particularly on Report? We were barely able to debate whole sections of the last criminal justice Bill.
	There are aspects of the Bill that we support. We welcome reform of the homicide laws and of the law on infanticide, and I am glad that we have finally had some movement on reform of the coroners system. Last year I said that the Bill was dead on arrival. It now seems to have made a miraculous recovery.
	A brief about the coroners and justice Bill has fallen into my hands. It appears to have been produced for the parliamentary Labour party. I dare say that it has been leaked. No doubt an immediate inquiry will be launched. Perhaps the police will want to interview me, although of course the right hon. Gentleman would claim no knowledge of that. I know that Labour resources are low but the right hon. Gentleman might be concerned about the quality of the briefing. It says:
	The Bill introduces a scheme to prevent criminals profiting from exploiting the conservatives of their crimes.
	I was not aware that the Conservative party was the victim of criminals, but we are very grateful for the Labour party's fraternal support.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield noted that, in October, the Government sensibly withdrew proposals in the Counter-Terrorism Bill that would have allowed Ministers to remove coroners and juries from inquests where the Minister deemed it in the public interest. That provision was far too broadly drawn and I hope that the Justice Secretary will assure us that he will not attempt to bring it back in the Bill.
	Our co-operation on emergency legislation, including allowing evidence from anonymous witnesses in court, was predicated on the inclusion of a sunset clause, and an explicit undertaking was given that the issue would be revisited. We therefore welcome the confirmation that the Government will revisit the measures in the Bill and the Justice Secretary has already helpfully written to me to explain their current thinking on the issue. We will of course co-operate fully to ensure that that legislation is properly brought on to the statute book on a permanent basis.
	It is entirely right also that we strengthen the powers of the Information Commissioner. The past year has highlighted the cavalier attitude within Government to the handling of personal data and the House will not need reminding that the Government have lost the details of very nearly every parent in the country, of many RAF veterans and of prison officers. Indeed during the passage of the last criminal justice Bill, we advocatedin line with a suggestion by the Information Commissionercriminal penalties for the loss of personal data. The Government did not feel able to support us then; perhaps they will now.
	It is remarkable that a Government who have such a shocking inability to retain people's data should be so eager to amass yet more. So while there will also be situations in which it is right to share data or where the sharing of data can better enable delivery of public services, we will want reassurance that measures to increase the Secretary of State's powers to compel data sharing and to remove any unnecessary obstacles will not grant Ministers the power to create a database state by stealth.
	As well as ideas that we welcome, there are some that we are pleased to see the back of. The Gracious Speech confirms that the Government's proposals outlined this time last year for a sentencing commission will not be taken forward. The mechanism that Lord Carter advocateda grid system for courts that would link resources to sentencingwould have seriously undermined judicial discretion. I am glad to say that the proposal, which almost nobody thought was sensible, has been ditched. Instead we have the downgraded proposal of a sentencing council; another retreat. We will closely scrutinise the remit and powers of the new body to ensure that it brings advantages and in no way undermines the autonomy of judges and magistrates to apply appropriate sentences.
	In May, the Government told us that there would be a law reform, victims and witnesses Bill. Now those words have disappeared from the title of the justice Bill. I hope that that will not reflect any downgrading of the importance of promoting the interests of the victims of crime. The Government say that the Bill will deliver a more effective and transparent justice service for victims. We hope so, but the Government's record hardly inspires confidence. An effective justice service would include an efficient and well-administered compensation scheme for victims, but last month the Public Accounts Committee reported that two thirds of victims of violent crime are unaware of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and only one in 20 even apply for compensation. That was the second serious indictment of the authority's failures by the Public Accounts Committee in eight years. Nothing has happened, so what will this Bill do about a victim compensation scheme that is not working?
	An effective justice service for victims would mean prisoners serving the sentences handed down to them by the courtsnot being released automatically at the halfway mark and then being rewarded with an extra 18 days off because Ministers failed to plan for adequate prison capacity. Victims of crime need real support, but unless they are a witness needing anonymity what will this proposed legislation do for them? Will there be measures to improve the court process for victims, which we all know can be traumatic? What about the victims of crimes committed by offenders on bail? After a string of cases earlier this year where victims were murdered by suspects on bail, we announced proposals to tighten the law. The Prime Minister seemed to agree, but the Justice Secretary was silent. Finally, he announced in June a consultation on limited changes to the law, but there has been nothing since then. Will he bring forward proposals to tighten the bail laws, or not? Will that be another retreat? If the Government truly care about victims, why has no one been appointed as a victims commissioner, five and a half years after they announced that there would be one? If they care about victims, why do they continue to release prisoners early when they know that some of them will create new victims when they should have been safely behind bars? At least 800 such offences have been committed, including one murder and two more alleged murders.
	When the Ministry of Justice was created 18 months ago we were promised a new approach: joined-up offender management and clear leadership. Instead, we have lurched from the scandal of early release to the fiasco of C-NOMIS, and from the daily crisis of prison overcrowding to the loss of prison officers' names and addresses. In place of a coherent long-term programme of reform, we have a series of gimmicks and short-term initiatives. What about the prison ship that the Justice Secretary promisedand told  The Sun a year ago that he was personally in talks with the Dutch Government about? Where is this ghost ship? Perhaps his Government did not need it in the end; they chose to release 40,000 criminals early instead. Then he gave a speech calling for more punishment. That was just after he had passed legislation giving tagged criminals more time off their sentence for days they spent at home in bed.
	Then there was another announcement, just this week: coloured bibs for offenders serving community sentences. Quite right, too, but it has taken Ministers years to deliver on that repeated promise; and, like this Government's modest constitutional changes, it is worthy but inadequate. Putting offenders in branded bibs can only be one element of a serious plan to make community sentences more effective. It will not change the fact that a third of community sentences are not even completed and one in 10 offenders commit another crime while serving their sentence. The tragedy is that by failing to rehabilitate offenders this Government are creating a new generation of victims.
	It is the Conservative party who are now showing that we have the progressive vision to reform prisons and turn around our criminal justice system, and so make Britain a safer place. We are the ones who are talking about a rehabilitation revolution to reduce reoffending. We are the ones talking about unlocking the voluntary sector to help prisoners get off drugs, into accommodation and back into work. We are the ones with a serious plan to reduce the growth in prison population without letting offenders out early.
	By contrast, the Government, who spoke of renewal just 18 months ago, have fallen back on Tony Blair's trademark eye-catching initiatives: short-term policies to mask the absence of long-term strategy. Their first phase of reforms was too often partisan if not in aim, as the need for change was sometimes real, then in practice. However, as the Justice Secretary has said, the constitution does not belong to a single political party. Too often, this Government have pulled blindly at the wires of Britain's constitutional settlement, careless of what they might disconnect. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman continues to hold the office of Lord Chancellor in spite of Tony Blair's overnight attempt to abolish the post is evidence of that. We desperately need a new politics where public trust can be rebuilt and power is returned to the people, to whom it belongs. We need a radical agenda of constitutional change to devolve decision making and power to individuals and communities, to enhance accountability and to strengthen the role of Parliament. Mending Britain's broken politics cannot be done by a Government who promise renewal and then abandon it, and it cannot be done by meagre parliamentary Bills, still less by Bills that remain only in draft form. Real change will not come from this Queen's Speech; it will come in one way aloneby a change of Government.

Jack Straw: This has been an interesting and unexpectedly lively debate. I am pleased to say that three Conservative Back Benchers were able to speak, but that rather more spoke from the Government Benches.  [Interruption.] Well, it is unwise to make charges at the beginning of the debate.
	I enjoyed the speech made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert); it must have been the first time that the adjective tantric has been worked into a debate on the rather solemn and sober matter of crime and justice. I am grateful to him for his approbation for my second outing in the other place: walking backwards twice in front of Her Majesty.  [Interruption.] I am also grateful for that sedentary comment that I looked marvellous. That is what the Home Secretary also said to me, and I shall tell my mother.  [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman's claims at the end of his tantric remarks that all would be much improved were there to be a Conservative Government would be slightly more credible were the experience of previous Conservative Governments to be in that directionthe simple fact is that it is not.
	I brought this book out earlier, and it is well worth readingcopies are available in the Library, as well as on my bookshelf. I am talking about the 1994 conservative party campaign guide. It is a wonderful source of information, and it makes a central point on pages 413 and 414. The book dates from the time when luminaries such as the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), and the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), were fully involved in the Conservative party as advisers or researchers; they were almost certainly writing this book.
	The Conservatives were pointing out on those pages, with glowing self-praise, the great value that the party had brought to a wider understanding of crime figures by the then Government's establishment of the British crime survey in 1981. They said:
	Unlike the figures for recorded crime, which show the number of crimes reported to the police, the BCS endeavours to build up an accurate picture of the number of crimes actually committed.
	They then apologetically said:
	Inevitably, the BCS shows that more crimes are committed than are actually reported to the police.
	I ask my hon. Friends, because sometimes this is disputed, to note the second tire, which says:
	While recorded crime doubled between 1981 and 1991, the BCS shows that the actual number of crimes committed rose by...50 per cent.
	So, that is all right then.
	During the Conservatives' 18 years in office, crime rose by 50 per cent.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), the deputy Chief Whip, ought to know that on becoming a Whip he takes not tantric vowswe will tread lightly on that onebut Trappist vows, and he ought not to make interventions. I think that he is paid, unlike any of his Front-Bench colleagues; that was a matter of great resentment when I was doing a proper job on the Opposition Front Bench and remaining silent. I am perfectly willing to concede to him that the BCS and, I believe, the recorded crime figures showed that something of a reduction in crime took place between 1995 and 1997, provided he is willing to concede to Labour Members that the same BCS that the Conservatives established has shown that since 1997 there has been not a 2 or 3 per cent. reduction in crime, but a 32 per cent. reduction. That is paralleled by reductions in recorded crime, too.
	The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) mentioned violent crime and, as his right hon. Friend the Leader for the Opposition sometimes does, he said expansively that violent crime had doubled in the past 11 and a half years. In 1998, I was presented with a submission that, I suspect, had been around the Home Office for many years. The officials, quite properly, could not tell me that, but it seemed to me to be of an antique nature. The submission stated that the recorded crime figures as they then were did not properly present what was going on locally in reports to the police of crimes that had been occurring in those areas.
	A number of proposals were made to me for changing the way in which recorded crime figures were reported and recorded. The consequence of that statistical change, in some series, would have been an 80 per cent. increase in the level of offences recordedand that was what happened. Against the advice of some people in the GovernmentI am unrepentant about thisand because I have always been committed to integrity in official statistics, as the record shows, I said that we ought to make the changes, notwithstanding the fact that much mischief would be made with claims that we were increasing crime, which we were not.
	A consequence of the change was that common assaults were included within the figures for violent crime as recorded crime. As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows well, such assaults are not only common in description but are the most common offence of violence. The result of the change and of another change in the national crime recording standards has been an increase in the numbers of crimes of violence that are recorded by 100 per cent. That does not in any way represent an increase in the level of violent crime taking place in our society. Proper debate cannot take place unless Opposition parties, as well as Government, are willing to recognise the reality behind the statistics as well as making the kind of points that they do.

Dominic Grieve: I hope that the Secretary of State will bear in mind what I said about the need for a mature debate. I come back to what Sir David Normington said in his letter to the Home Secretary of November 2008:
	In view of the fact that more serious violence has not reduced in the way that we would have wanted in recent years, and that these offences cause the most harm to individual victims and to society as a whole, our long-term strategy on violence focuses on seriousness. This includes homicides, serious wounding and serious sexual offences such as rape. Recorded crime statistics do indicate that despite recent falls, the levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were ten years ago.
	 [ Interruption. ] The Home Secretary is right to say from a sedentary position that that was not a letter to herit was a briefing document.

Jack Straw: I was going on to say two things. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary would be the first to acknowledge that we are not suggesting that there are no changes upwards as well as changes downwards in an overall series. There have been, for example, worrying concerns in some parts of the country about rises in knife crimethere is certainly greater community concern about that matterand about gun crime. My right hon. Friend does not sit on her hands, but introduces changes and improvements with the police. Those measures are now working to show that those levels of crime are going down.
	Before I make my main point on the issue of statistics, I want to draw the attention of the House to something else that I have noticed as I go around the country. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was with me this time last week when we were listening to an interesting presentation in north Leeds, in west Yorkshirein Calverley. I have noticed that Opposition Members are happy to take the credit locally on behalf of the police or local Conservative councils, and I have noticed this in my constituency, too, for the fact that crime has come down across the country

Vernon Coaker: They publish it everywhere.

Jack Straw: As my hon. Friend says, they publish it everywhere.
	If that is the case, as it is in both Opposition Front Benchers' constituenciescrime has decreased in Beaconsfield by 6 per cent. between 2002-03 and this year, and by 9 per cent. in Arundelthe aggregate must also show a similar pattern of crime coming down, not going up.
	The point was made by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) that we should ensure that the British crime survey and the recorded crime statistics are regarded as national statistics under the control of the national statistician and nothing to do with Ministers. They are national statistics and they are under the control [ Interruption. ] They are fully under the control of the national statistician. I have checked that point, not with the Home Officenot that I distrust the Home Office in any sensebut with the oracle, the House of Commons statistician. I wanted to be absolutely sure that those statistics are official statistics under the control of the national statistician.
	In answer to a further question raised by the hon. Member for Eastleigh and by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, the United Kingdom Statistics AuthorityI am proud to say that I had a great deal to do with the establishment of that entirely independent body and that it is one of our many major constitutional reformsis studying barriers to trust in crime statistics as part of its 2008-09 programme. It is considering precisely the issue that concerns all of us. Notwithstanding the fact that the data are robust, there is a sense in the country that crime is going up and not down. That should be of concern to all parties, especially those that aspire to government.

Christopher Huhne: The reality is, as everybody knows, that the Office for National Statistics reviews the figures, but it is not directly responsible for them as it is, for example, for the census or other figures. That is the key distinction. If the Government want to put trust back into those figures, the ONS must be given direct responsibility for them.

Jack Straw: We are dancing on the head of a pin. The census is sui generic; it is conducted by the national statistician, for obvious reasons. When monetary data are collected for the purpose of producing national statistics, the ONS has to go to others to collect the data, and it then has to validate them. That also happens with crime statistics. The British crime survey does not have to depend on the intermediation of police authorities. There are issues with the recording of some crimes, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has addressed them. Such issues will continue to arise, so the more robust we make the system the better. I addressed those issues as Home Secretary, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), and little thanks have we had, because the numbers for recorded crimes went up, not down.
	I shall briefly run through the issues raised by hon. Members in the debate and then make some more detailed remarks, especially in response to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) both raised the issue of the Marper judgment in the European Court of Human Rights, and I will come back to that.
	I apologise for not being in my place for the speech by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), although I saw some of it, and he raised several wider issues about the economy and matters of profound concern to his constituents, as well as to the major financial institutions in his constituency. I will personally draw his speech to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor so that he can make reference to it when he responds in the economic debate.
	The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made several points about the coroners Bill. I understand that he also suggested national funding for the coronial system, and again I apologise for not being here for the major portion of his speech. I understand the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, because two Bills have been put into one, but they are still effectively two Bills, and the new Bill will do the same job as the two Bills would have done. I shall deal with the issue of parliamentary time as some important points were made.
	Our view is that it is better to leave the funding and appointment of coroners as it is, not least because, although some changes are taking place, local authorities are attached to the idea that they play a role in the appointment of their coroners. There is no great demand for changing that aspect of the system and my view is if it ain't broke, don't change it.
	The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) and the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield raised the issue of piracy. The law on piracy has not changed. Piracy on the high seas used to be a capital offence, and under the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act 1997, which made the law of nations the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, it is still a serious one, with a maximum penalty of life. The hon. and learned Gentleman suggested that our Royal Navy officers might be impeded in arresting people committing piracy on the high seas because such alleged pirates could apply for asylum. People can apply for anything they want, but they would not be given asylum. Article 1F of the 1951 refugee convention states that it does not apply to a person
	with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that...he has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee.
	There is no question about the matter. Pirates could not conceivably have an application for asylum entertained. However, I shall ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence writes, either directly or through me, to both Members in more detail about the matter.

Tobias Ellwood: The Secretary of State does not need to write to me; he needs to write to the Navy and members of our armed forces, who need clarification. Despite all the Jack Sparrow films, piracy is not glamorous; it is an act of war. In an act of war, the armed forces are allowed to shoot at pirates, but if it is not an act of war but a criminal act, they are not allowed to shoot at them. The Navy is struggling with that confusion, which is why we need clarification from the Secretary of State.

Jack Straw: That point runs into the whole issue of rules of engagement, but I will follow it up.

Andrew MacKinlay: My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) and the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), who are both in the Chamber, and I held discussions with the Kenyan Government last week. On behalf of my colleagues may I tell the House how the Kenyan Government collaborated with the United Kingdom in bringing to trial in Mombasa pirates captured in the Indian ocean? That important collaboration should be acknowledged by the House and the Government. There is great strain on the Kenyan Government, who are the one beacon of justice and democracy available to the Royal Navy and the Indian navy in bringing pirates to justice, and the House should acknowledge that.

Jack Straw: Of course I acknowledge that and I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) raised a number of important issues. One was her concern about what she described as a cottage industry in certification that those seeking British citizenship had sufficient facility in the English language. I have discussed the matter with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and we will of course follow it up.
	My hon. Friend made an interesting point about madrassahs. I am sure she accepts that the vast majority of people of Asian heritagecertainly in my constituencyare concerned about having proper facility in the English language. They do not want bogus certificates, because they recognise that the English language is an important precondition for proper integration. Just because people can speak English does not mean that their community will be fully integrated, but I am in no doubt at all that there must be that facility and that they want that facility and the proper availability of classes in English as a second language. I have a number of madrassahs in my constituency, and the vast majority of them are properly moderated, properly checked and work satisfactorily, but I will follow up with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the issue that my hon. Friend raises about whether there is, in general, a proper requirement for the same kind of Criminal Records Bureau check that she referred to in respect of herself.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Keighley and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) both referred to concerns about electoral registration and the need for it to be improved, and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) is actively considering that matter in the context of the Political Parties and Elections Bill.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Slough also raised concerns about visa fees. I am afraid to say that I do not quite share her view, but, again, I will draw that to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) raised the issue of justice week and the concerns of trade unions about what they say are cuts in criminal justice budgets. There is some irony, because it was only in the summer that the Policy Exchange, in a report endorsed by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield issued an attack on the Government for spending too much on criminal justice and the law and order system, saying that we now spend more as a proportion of our GDP on that than any other OECD country does. We spend a great deal; we spend more on legal aid and policingI am very glad that we doand as a part of that, there has been a 67 per cent. real-terms increase for probation. Where those people got the idea that there would be a 25 per cent. cut in probation funding I just do not know, because it is completely and utterly untrue. However, because of the impact that the world economic downturn has on Government revenues, spending on all public services will not rise in the near future as it has done in the past. So we must search more vigorously for efficiencies in the probation service, the Prison Service and the Court Service. I happen to know from my rather lengthy service as a Minister that it is surprising how efficiencies can be found if someone starts to search them out.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock raised the issue of Zimbabwean refugees, and whether they should be allowed to workI will pass that on to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretaryas well as commenting on the chair of the Electoral Commission. The appointment of the chair of the commission is made by Mr. Speaker, on the advice of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission. I happen to be a member of that Committee, but in a minority. It is an appointment entirely within the purview of the House, unlike, for example, that of the Information Commissioner, which required the endorsement of the Houseat my behest, as it were, in this case.
	Let me deal with the Marper judgment in respect of DNA. As my right hon. and hon. Friends will have seen from the wires, the European Court of Human Rights said about the holding of DNA, fingerprint and other samples by the criminal justice system in England and Wales that it was
	struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales.
	It therefore declared that retention outwith article 8 of the European convention on human rights.
	I make first a preliminary point, which is germane to the issue of Bills of Rights and responsibilitiesa subject to which I shall return later.  [Interruption.] The Conservatives have asked a lot of questions, and I am trying to answer them. This matter was considered under the Human Rights Act 1998 by the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Law Lords. On each occasion, the British courts found in our favour, so the Human Rights Act was not to blamein fact, it provided important evidence about the margin of appreciation. The decision was made by the European Court of Human Rights.
	The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield knows that if convention rights are incorporated into domestic law, as they are across Europe, the highest domestic court will sometimes be overturned by the Strasbourg Court, but that does not undermine the case for incorporation. My point is that we do better, where there is no margin of appreciation, if there is no incorporation. The one point on which there is agreement across both parties is that we remain committed to the convention itself. Of course, the hon. and learned Gentleman is in favour of the Human Rights Act.
	The judgment, which I have read in full today, is interesting. I recommend in particular paragraph 119, which draws out what the Court means by the
	indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales.
	It goes on to suggest that distinctions should be made between the nature of offences for which samples have been taken, and discusses whether they should be time-limited and whether there should be an independent review. Those matters will be considered by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in consultation across Government. We have an obligation to report initially to the Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe by March.
	It was I who introduced, in section 82 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, the change that DNA samples could be retained even when there was a subsequent acquittal. I did that for a straightforward reason, because of a case involving a man who was charged with burglary. Before his trial for that burglary, a rape was committed, and the police matched a DNA sample that had been taken from him when he was arrested for burglary with a sample found on the person who alleged the rape. He was convicted of the rape, but was subsequently acquitted of the burglary. He appealed all the way up to the Law Lords, who said, on a construction of the law as it then stood, that the DNA sample had been retained unlawfully, and that the rape conviction, which was otherwise entirely proper, therefore had to be struck down.
	I thought that unjust to the victimindeed, I am clear that it wasand so I introduced that measure. My recollection is that the measure had all-party support at the time, but I will check the record. The judgment might mean justice for those whose data is being held, but there is a much more important issue to consider: justice for the victims of the most serious and egregious offences, and ensuring that the offenders who commit such crimes are convicted.

Nick Herbert: One argument that the right hon. Gentleman has advanced regarding the incorporation of convention rights into our domestic law is that the European Court would take increasing account of the jurisprudence of the British courts. How much account did the European Court take of our courts' decisions in this latest case on DNA?

Jack Straw: If the hon. Gentleman reads the judgment, he will find that the Court did take those judgments into account. There is page after page on that. It happened not to agree with them, but that is a different point. He does not make a strong point, if I may say so, because it has never been suggested that the margin of appreciation means that if a country incorporates the convention into its domestic law, the European Court will never overturn a decision of its highest court. That must be nonsense. If he were to talk to members of the Court in Strasbourg, he would know that proper account is taken of the high level of consideration that our courts give to the articles.

Mark Field: I want to return to the Secretary of State's previous point about faulty DNA evidence. I think that he stated that justice for the perpetrator of what turned out to be a crime was less important than justice for innocent people, but surely a fundamental tenet of the British legal system is that a defendant should have a fair trial. Should not justice for the defendant therefore be paramount in the Secretary of State's mind, and is not that in stark contrast to what happens in many European legal systems?

Jack Straw: Of course I accept that, and I would be happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman in more detail outside the House about what happened in the case that I was effectively overturning.
	At the heart of the Marper issue are the circumstances in which the police should be entitled to retain DNA and fingerprint samples where there is no subsequent conviction. There is no right to test British citizens at random; no one is suggesting that that is the case. The question is whether there is a right not only to take DNA and fingerprints on arrest or charge, but to retain such samples, and if so, for how long. The point that I am making is that, unless there is significant provision in this regard, a number of people who are guilty and who pose a real and serious threat to societyincluding rapistswill go free. The man who was quite properly convicted of that rape, and subsequently got out on a technicality, had had a fair trial. The evidence was overwhelming: he had committed the crime. He got out on a technicality, and I do not happen to think that that is fair.

Dominic Grieve: I appreciate the Secretary of State's point. Obviously, I have not had a chance to study the judgment in great detail, but it seems to me that it would be perfectly possible to cater for the particular problem that he identified in 2002 while still observing the terms of the judgment, which will generally allow people who have been acquitted or never charged to have their DNA removed.

Jack Straw: Let us hope that that is the case. If hon. Members study carefully one of the most important paragraphs in the judgmentparagraph 119they will see, as we shall see in the headlines tomorrow, that although the Court was
	struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention,
	that general statement was then highly qualified. I am sure that the lawyers in the Home Office will be looking with great care at the nature of those qualificationsand quite right, too.
	I want to deal briefly with the points raised by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, and then with other key points. The hon. Gentleman made much sport about the Government's programme of constitutional renewal. This has been the most radical constitutionally reforming Government since the war; there is no question about that. This compares with the paucity of constitutional changein fact, the absence of itduring previous Conservative Administrations. The Conservatives might complain about the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000, devolution, the establishment of the Mayor of London, and what we have done in respect of the House of Lords, but these are major constitutional changes that Vernon Bogdanora very independent-minded constitutional experthas said will be seen as a quiet revolution in our constitutional arrangements.
	Moreover, although I accept that we have to do more, not least in terms of the time spent on the Floor of the House on Report, Parliament has been strengthened massively in the past 20 or 30 years, compared with the kind of Parliament that existed in the 1950s and 1960s. I shall referalthough I shall not read it out at lengthto what Michael Ryle, a former Clerk of Committees of the House, said in 2005:
	a simple factual comparison with the 1950s and early 1960s shows that Parliamentparticularly the House of Commonsplays a more active, independent and influential role in Britain today than at any time for many years...the major advances in the past fifty years should not be derided.
	Parliament in the apparently golden age of the 1950s was supine; there were no rebellions of any kind at all. It was a supine, part-time Parliament, and that has now changed for the better.
	The constitutional reform Bill is specified in the Gracious Speech. Everyone knows that what has changed since then is the overriding imperative of dealing with the world economic downturn, but the Bill will require parliamentary time. The Queen's Speech states:
	My Government will continue to take forward proposals on constitutional renewal, including strengthening the role of Parliament and other measures.
	As ever, Her Majesty meant what she saidand that is my intention, too.
	On the proposals in respect of a Bill of Rights and responsibilities, documents will be published. I accept that they have taken more time than I had hoped, but the hon. Gentleman can hardly complain that I have been silent on the issue; nor has the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon. Indeed, I know that the hon. Gentleman has paid me the compliment of reading very importantif I may say sospeeches that I made in October last year and in February and September this year, and I have paid him the compliment of reading his speeches too, which are interesting, if to some extent misconceived.

Nick Herbert: On the Lord Chancellor's previous point, may I press him on the constitutional reform Bill? It was a draft Bill in the last Session. Today the Leader of the House published the Government's legislative programme. It includes 14 Bill, but the constitutional renewal Bill does not feature among them. There are seven draft Bills, but the constitutional renewal Bill does not feature among them either. Can the right hon. Gentleman be clearer about the prospects for legislating in this Session on constitutional renewal?

Jack Straw: We have already had a draft Bill, so there is no point in publishing another draft Bill. That would be absurd, if I may say so, and a waste of parliamentary time. The reason why the subject was referred to in the Queen's Speech in those terms is that a slot for the Bill could not be guaranteed. That is why that formulation is used. My earnest intention, which requires negotiation with the usual channels as well as with my colleagues, is that the Bill should be brought forward. I cannot guarantee that, not least because of the negotiation with the usual channels. We shall have to see what progress is made on other Bills, but that remains my earnest intention.
	Time is short. I can see that, much though hon. Members wish to spend most of their time on a Thursday evening listening to me, some have pressing commitments elsewhere, surprisingly. On the coroners and justice Bill, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs helpfully summarised it and welcomed a good deal of it. Each part of that has been the subject of an extensive consultation exercise.

Christopher Huhne: Can the Justice Secretary give the House an assurance that he will not reintroduce in the coroners Bill the clauses on secret inquests and the Secretary of State's powers from the counter-terrorism Bill?

Jack Straw: I am afraid I cannot satisfy the hon. Gentleman on that. The proposals were never for secret inquests; they were for inquests without a jury. Only 2 per cent. of inquests in any event take place with a jury. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are considering the points that have been raised. Proposals will be brought forward in due coursein the Bill as presented to Parliament, I hope.
	The Political Parties and Elections Bill is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) drew to the attention of the House, a carried over Bill. It has already had its First and Second Reading, and its Public Bill Committee stage upstairs, and awaits its Report stage downstairs. There is a considerable amount of work to do before Report, not least in respect of the Electoral Commission, as we wish to take account of what was said on all sides on the issue of strengthening registration procedures, and also on issues relating to party funding. I repeat the commitments that I have given to the House, as has the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon, that we believe, and I have always believed, that such a matter should be proceeded with only with a consensus between the parties, if at all possible.
	I began these remarks by referring to the record of the Government on crime. We are the first Government since the war to have seen a reduction in crime, both in recorded crime and in the British crime survey. Our determination, however, is to make the communities that all of us serve even safer. It is for those reasons that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I have brought forward these measures. I commend the Queen's Speech, and the debate, to the House.
	 Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned. (Helen Goodman.)
	 Debate to be resumed on Monday 8 December.

NAOMI HOUSE CHILDREN'S HOSPICE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Helen Goodman.)

Maria Miller: I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to hold this debate, and I am grateful to the Exchequer Secretary for coming along to respond to it.
	Naomi House was badly hit in the recent Icelandic banking crisis. The charity had a deposit of 5.7 million with Kaupthing Singer  Friedlander, which had its assets frozen two months ago. Naomi House is a children's hospice that supports hundreds of families with children who have illnesses that will shorten their livesterminal illnesses. Those families come from throughout Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, West Sussex, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Surrey. To deliver its service, the hospice relies on trained doctors and nurses as well as on the efforts of more than 400 volunteers. Some 1,400 corporate organisations, many in my constituency, support the hospice, including the Automobile Association and Winterthur Life.
	Singer  Friedlander, an old, established British bank taken over by the Icelandic bank Kaupthing in 2006, was regulated by the Financial Services Authority. When the Government acted to freeze its assets, it was clear from the start that they did not intend charities, large or small, to suffer as a result. Indeed, in one Prime Minister's questions, the Leader of the House, who was standing in for the Prime Minister at the time, stated that there would be 100 per cent. protection for small charities and that the Government were
	taking steps to protect larger charities by freezing the assets of the Icelandic banks and by lending 100 million while the unfreezing of those assets is sorted out.[ Official Report, 15 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 790.]
	That was an encouraging response, in which the Government articulated specific support. Indeed, on another occasion the Leader of the House, when questioned specifically on the plight of Naomi House, stated in the national media that direct support for charities would be in place, that the Government would do everything that they could to help charities and that they would not leave charities on their own. More recently, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), made it clear that the commitment to helping charities through this crisis was still very much alive and well.
	The problem is that we are now two months on from when the assets were seized, and Naomi House has yet to see any of the promises bear fruit. It has seen confirmation that it is classified as a large charity under FSA rules, which means that it will be placed in a queue with other wholesale investors such as local authorities. In no way have the specific difficulties faced by charities been recognised, particularly in respect of securing borrowing to try to get them through this difficult time.
	At the creditors' meeting on Monday it was clear that recovering the money that has been lost will be an immensely long and drawn-out process, with no certainty about the outcome. Naomi House has also learned that the Office of the Third Sector will produce an action plan, but that is promised only for some time in the new year. Recent comments from the Minister with responsibility for the third sector at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations recession summit made it clear that the action plan will look more broadly at the economic downturn faced by charities, rather than at the banking crisis in particular. Frankly, despite specific approaches to the Prime Minister, the Department of Health and the Charity Commission, there has been radio silence from the Government about how they will keep their undertakings real and alive for Naomi House.
	The problem faced by Naomi House is that one third of its assets5.7 millionare frozen. For any organisation, that is a significant and overwhelming financial crisis. As a direct result of that, on 25 November Naomi House was forced to suspend its at-home service for terminally ill children in my constituency. The hospice-at-home outreach programme provided unique and much-needed support for families, and it was due to be rolled out into other areas of Hampshire, yet now the future of that service is bleak, and it has been suspended indefinitely. Two months may not be a long time for a Minister or Department, but it is a very long time for a charity that is almost completely reliant on its own financial resources. The trustees have been forced to take this action to safeguard other services. Without some clarity today, there may have to be further announcements.
	This matter cuts across other Departments. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, is well aware of the issues that face Naomi House, but his recent comments serve to illustrate the fact that a one-size-fits-all financial solution will not necessarily work in this case. I hope that the Exchequer Secretary can respond to that point. The hon. Gentleman suggested that the Department of Health, local authorities and primary care trusts could offer some way forward in terms of additional short-term funding, but the local situation in Hampshire for Naomi House means that it has no local authority contracts or PCT funding and receives only 300,000 from the Government through the Department of Health. In the context of a yearly turnover of 2.5 million, that is a tiny amount of money, but there is no indication from the Department that it is going to increase it in the near future, unless the Exchequer Secretary can advise me otherwise.
	The time has come for the Government to act decisively by clearly stating the support that Naomi House will receive. It is doing what it can to help itself. It helped to establish the Save our Savings groupa group of charities that are affected in the same way by the Icelandic financial crisisand has secured a seat on the Kaupthing Singer  Friedlander administrator's creditors committee. However, the time has come for the Government to do their bit, too, and to show that they will follow through with some tangible support, as they promised when this crisis started.
	Going back to the promise made from the Front Bench by the Leader of the House on 15 October, what steps are being taken to protect larger charities, particularly given the protracted nature of the administrative process? The NCVO has been working hard to support the sector and pressing for a loan facility. What is the situation with regard to loans? Providing such support until charities are able to recover their own money may be just the sort of help that can stop any further cuts to important services such as those that Naomi House provides. The Leader of the House said that that money would be available, but we are still to hear any details.
	There are some specific differences in the Naomi House case that suggest that the Government's general approach may not provide the support that is intended. Will the Exchequer Secretary therefore undertake to look into the problems that it faces as a special case?
	The Government may want to consider, perhaps not now but in the medium term, whether the FSA rules on eligibility for compensation, which use the Companies Act 1985 to define what constitutes a small charity, are as robust as they need to be. Leaving Naomi House out in the cold cannot be anything other than an unintended consequence of how the current regulations are drafted.
	Will the Exchequer Secretary undertake to join her colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, who has offered to meet representatives from Naomi House to secure a cross-departmental solution to the problem?
	In conclusion, Naomi House works throughout seven counties, and in constituencies that are represented by Members of Parliament on both sides of the House. It provides a service that the NHS does not. It supports families of terminally ill children in a way that no other service does. A petition on the 10 Downing street website, calling for Government assistance, was set up by local campaigner Steve Brine and now has more than 4,000 signatures, which shows the strength of feeling in Hampshire and beyond about the plight of Naomi House.

Oliver Letwin: I hope that my hon. Friend is aware that many of my constituents in West Dorset feel exactly the same way, and have benefited from the services provided. They are very anxious for those services to go on being provided.

Maria Miller: I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and for showing his support for the work that we are doing. His intervention serves to reiterate that the services supplied by Naomi House are not just confined to the boundaries of one county, but spread far and wide. That is a testament to the work that it does, and to its professionalism.
	Naomi House is a lifeline for many familiesfamilies who are in a position that many of us hope never to find ourselves in. I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will use the opportunity of the debate to show her clear support for the work of Naomi House, and to outline exactly what the Government propose to do, in tangible, specific terms, to ensure that this charity can thrive in the future.

Mark Oaten: Given that we have slightly longer for the Adjournment debate, I would like to make a few remarks to support the speech made by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller), but I do not want to detain the House long.
	Naomi House is in my constituency, and during the 12 years that I have been a Member of Parliament, it has been a jewel in the crown of the Winchester area. It does not serve just the Winchester constituency, but as the hon. Lady mentioned, a large area with a large number of children who have benefited from the facilities that it provides. The point that I wish to emphasise to the Exchequer Secretary is the different nature of this organisation. It is not like some of the other charities that have lost money in Icelandic banks, such as local authorities or many of the businesses affected. It is unique in that it provides a service that many people would argue is one that the Government should provide. Many of us were surprised to find, when we came to Parliament, that hospices were not funded by the NHS. If they did not exist, somebodythe Government, we assumewould have to provide such care for children in such awful circumstances.

Oliver Letwin: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is particularly the case with children's hospices? Adult hospices in our constituencies receive significantly more support from the NHS than children's hospices.

Mark Oaten: The right hon. Gentleman is right. It has always been very peculiar that children's hospices have been treated in that way, but that is what has happened, and charities such as Naomi House have had to take on a responsibility that should be taken on by the Government. It is a responsibility that does not relate just to the work that takes place in the buildings of Naomi House, but to the outreach work that it carries out in people's homes. It has worked alongside the NHS on that, hand in hand with hard-working professionals at the Basingstoke and Winchester hospitals. We are now seeing the acute impact that the loss of funding is having. Those professionals working in the NHS now have to find more time in order to fill the gap that has been left by the disappearance of the service provided by Naomi House for outreach work.

Christopher Huhne: I would like to support my hon. Friend's comments to the Exchequer Secretary because in my constituency, in south Hampshire, Naomi House is one of the most popular charities. It is repeatedly subject to mayoral and other appeals precisely because of its outreach work, which is the work most threatened by the freezing of the 5.7 million.
	It is also worth pointing out that the children's hospital movement throughout the country is important because it provides parents with respite care in what is an extremely gruelling time. I entirely support my hon. Friend's comments about the outreach work combined with the respite care. It is difficult to know how we could survive without it. The public sector would need to provide it if it were not provided in the way in which we have discussed.

Mark Oaten: My hon. Friend makes a good point. If the service disappears, Government money will have to be found to meet the demand because, sadly, children with diseases and illnesses will not disappear.
	I hope that the Exchequer Secretary sets out Government thinking for dealing with such a unique situation. It will be disappointing if she responds in general terms and talks about the Government's plans for businesses or charities. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, the FSA schemes for charities will not help Naomi House.
	The matter requires not only a Treasury response but a response from the Secretary of State for Health. I am disappointed that the Secretary of State has been silent about the issue because there is a moral, if not necessarily a legal, departmental responsibility to engage with it. I hope that the Exchequer Secretary takes away my hope, which I suspect others share, that the Secretary of State for Health will be prepared to meet the trustees and chairman of Naomi House to discuss the impact of the loss of money and how that will affect the NHS in the Hampshire region and beyond. I would also like to consider whether, in the next couple of months, we can find a way of putting money into Naomi House so that we can restore the outreach programme and provide assurances that it will continue its current work.
	Naomi House has a fine reputation for providing facilities for younger children who are sick, and it has recently begun a programme of building Jacksplace, which will be a superb facility for teenagers who are in need of such care. It has always been awkward for Naomi House to have young children and teenagers together in a hospice. Several hon. Members and I were able to attend the laying of the foundation stone for Jacksplace. I fear that it will also be in jeopardy unless we can find funds urgently for Naomi House.
	I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will view the matter as unique. I do not want to do down other charities that look after cats or rare birds, but surely the charity that we are considering does, in many ways, the Government's work for them. It has lost money through no fault of its own and must cut back essential services for children. The charity is a case for special pleadingthe Government should step in and act with urgency.

Angela Eagle: I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) on securing this important debate and I thank other hon. Members with a constituency interest who have contributed and rightly reflected their concern and that of their constituents about the circumstances in which Naomi House finds itself.
	As the hon. Lady said, the hospice does extraordinary work to provide respite care, terminal care and bereavement support for children and families from across the south of England. I know from my inquiries that hundreds of families are grateful for the dedication of the Naomi House staff and the support that they have received from the charity, often at the most traumatic times of their lives.
	The Government's current support for Naomi House is worth 330,000. As the hon. Lady pointed out, that is a small portion of the overall funding that the charity generates, and pays for only a small portion of the work that it undertakes. I have a similar institution, Clare House, in my area, albeit not in my constituency. Many right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House have had direct experience of the extremely valuable work that such organisations do. I hope that no one will be in any doubt about the widespread recognition of the value of the work that such institutions do. In recognition of the work that children's hospices do, the Government announced in February that the current grant for England's 40 children's hospices would be extended, with a further 20 million available between 2009 and 2011.
	As the hon. Lady pointed out, Naomi House is among those British charities that hold deposits in the Icelandic banks or their UK subsidiaries. This is an extremely uncertain time for those charities and for a wide range of other bodies that are in a similar position, be they companies, educational establishments, local authorities or other not-for-profit organisations. The majority of the charities affected hold deposits in Kaupthing Singer  Friedlanderor KSFwhich is a UK-based subsidiary of Iceland's Kaupthing bank. As with much else in the current financial turbulence, the situation regarding the Icelandic banks in the UK is complicated, so it is worth reminding ourselves how we got into these circumstances.
	In July, the International Monetary Fund's mission to Iceland concluded that the Icelandic banking sector faced significant risks. On 29 September, the Icelandic Government acquired a 75 per cent. stake in Glitnir, nationalising Iceland's third largest bank. Amid the turbulence in global financial markets, two other Icelandic banksLandsbanki and Kaupthingfound themselves in increasing financial difficulties. On 7 and 8 October, the Financial Services Authority, the UK's financial regulator, determined that the funds held by the UK operations of those two banksHeritable and KSFno longer met the levels of funding required by law. The banks had put themselves in an unsustainable position. Their holdings had sunk to such a level that it would have been dangerous for them to continue accepting money from depositors. To protect retail depositors, the Treasury, using powers under the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008, transferred retail deposits from KSF's Edge deposit business and from Heritable to ING Direct. The remainder of the business entered into administration, with the remaining eligible retail depositors also being guaranteed.
	The Government have announced that we will guarantee all UK-based retail depositors in Icelandic banks. That guarantee ensures that individual UK savers will receive protection in full. Of course, those charities that are eligible claimants will receive protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, but there are no special rules under the scheme for charities, whose eligibility is determined in the same way as for all other depositors. The FSA is responsible for making the rules governing eligibility for compensation under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The rules are based on organisational form rather than organisational purpose. Charity is a status that can apply to a number of forms, because charities and other third sector bodies can beand areorganised in different ways.
	The guiding principle behind much of the financial regulation is that the system is intended to offer protection to ordinary investors, savers and users of financial servicesin other words, people who have limited resources, who are less likely to have access to the expertise to protect themselves and who might not be in a position to reduce the risks that they face by, say, diversification. In practice, that translates into making private individuals and small organisations of all kindsthat is, retail depositorseligible as claimants under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, as well as treating all larger organisations as wholesale depositors and therefore ineligible for the compensation scheme.
	The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that Naomi House is not defined as a small depositor or a retail depositor, but as a wholesale depositor.
	Many small charities will be guaranteed under the scheme, but Naomi House and other larger charities will not qualify. Like a number of other charities, companies, educational establishments, local authorities and other bodies, Naomi House is classified as a wholesale depositor and, as such, will have to await the outcome of the administration procedures.
	The Government's decision to intervene to ensure that retail depositors receive their money in full was based on the need to ensure financial stability and to protect the taxpayer. Compared with small retail depositors, wholesale depositors have a greater ability to assess and mitigate financial risk, including through diversification of their savings or investment portfolios. Charities that are not eligible for compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme will be treated in accordance with the usual administration procedures.
	Details of the timetable and the process for the administration of KSF are a matter for the administrators, Ernst and Young, and I would suggest that those charities seeking further information contact the administrators directly. I was pleased to learnthe hon. Lady mentioned this in her speechthat Naomi House has played a central role in the creation of a new charity action group, formed to represent charities that have deposits at risk with KSF. More than 25 charities are members of the group, which is campaigning to secure the return of the funds invested with the bank. I am also pleased to report to the Houseagain, the hon. Lady mentioned thisthat a representative from the group speaking for Naomi House and other charities has secured a place on the creditors committee of KSF, which met the administrators for the first time on Monday. That representation on the creditors committee will give charities a stronger voice during the administration process. The third sector is independent and, as such, it is not the Government's role to provide charities and other not-for-profit organisations with financial advice.

Mark Oaten: There was indeed a meeting on Monday, and I do not know whether the Minister has heard the feedback, but it was pretty grim news for the charities attending because the creditors made it clear that the charities were very much at the back end of the queue, so it is very unlikely that Naomi House will have its money returned under that process.

Angela Eagle: Processes of administration have to be gone through and the creditors have a particular queue to go through in law. There is no option but to go through the process. I recognise that it leads to some uncertainty, and it is too early in the process to tell whether all the money will be forthcoming in the end. That is the nature of administration procedures of this kind, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

Christopher Huhne: The other problem, of course, is that the administration process can be very lengthy. We have seen under past administrations that the process has taken an incredible amount of timewe saw it with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, for example. Moreover, the professional advisers' fees have eaten up large amounts of the money that was ultimately available to creditors. In those circumstances, given the importance of the work of some of these charities and the likelihood that the public sector will have to pick up the bill for some of that work if it is not done, does the Minister think that a little more flexibility would be in order?

Angela Eagle: It is easy to call for a Minister to be flexible in these circumstances and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there is nothing I would like more than to be able to be flexible in all kinds of ways in these circumstances, but there are many creditors and many larger charities with problems in this particular tale. Other public authorities and other organisations and businesses might well say that they have as much of a right to the flexibility that the hon. Gentleman is asking me to exercise on behalf of this charity alone. There are any number of other charities and I have to say that it is very difficult, much as I would like a sensible line to be drawn.

Maria Miller: I can understand the problem faced by the Minister, who clearly has to make decisions. I was simply picking up, however, on what her colleague the Leader of the House had said when she was in her place, exactly where the Minister is now. I quote her again:
	We are taking steps to protect larger charities by freezing the assets of the Icelandic banks and by lending 100 million while the unfreezing of those assets is sorted out.[ Official Report, 15 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 790.]
	It seemed very clear to me at the time that the Leader of the House was offering tangible support to those charities, including specifically Naomi House. Has that situation changed?

Angela Eagle: I am happy to deal with that issue. What my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said is absolutely accurate, but the hon. Lady might have misunderstood the use of the 100 million. This was a reference to a loan made to the London branch of Landsbanki by the Bank of England on 13 October, in order to assist it in its wind-up. The loan is secured over a significant amount of Landsbanki's assets and at a commercial rate of interest. It is expected that the loan will be recovered in full from those assets as Landsbanki is wound up. That will help to ensure an orderly wind-down for Landsbanki, which maximises returns to its creditors, but it is a short-term loan for Landsbanki.
	From information that we subsequently received via the Charity Commission and because of the work of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), it emerged that most of the charitable money caught up in the Icelandic banking situation, if I may refer to it in that way, appears to be held in KSF. I would not like the hon. Lady to go away with the impression that there is 100 million out there on deposit, waiting to be given in grant aid of some kind to charities that are affected as creditors of the Icelandic banks. That is not the use that the 100 million referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend was put to, and it is not and never was the intended use of the money, which is being focused on a bank that, as far as we can tell, does not have charitable deposits in the same way as KSF.

Maria Miller: I thank the Minister for giving way again; she is being very generous. I am surprised by that statement, because the Leader of the House was responding to a direct question about what support was being given to charities. It is surprising to discover that the 100 million was not being made available to charities, but was being used to prop up a bank. Would it not have been better to have perhaps directed some of that money to tide charities over in the way that charitable organisations have asked?

Angela Eagle: The hon. Lady has made her point, but this is not propping up a bank. The 100 million was given to Landsbanki to secure the orderly wind-down of a bank whose assets had been frozen. The assets were frozen to prevent them from being taken out of the country in a drastic and rapidly developing situation. The 100 million that was lent does not prop up the bank. As I said earlier, it helps to secure an orderly wind-down of a bank that is not relevant to Naomi House's issue, because it is Landsbanki, not KSF.
	First, this is a loan; it is not a grant. Secondly, it will be recovered in full at a commercial rate of interest as part of the wind-down of Landsbanki, so I would not like the hon. Lady to go away with the idea that, somehow, there is a pot of 100 million that could have been used, or is intended to be used, to give some protection to wholesale depositors. The Government decided to protect retail depositors. Wholesale depositors, whatever their form, go into the queue through the administration process to try to recover the money that they have on deposit. That includes all the authorities, public or otherwise, and companies and investors that do not qualify as retail investors. That is the situation as it is at the moment. Let me assure this House that the Government take very seriously the problems faced by charities with regard to their deposits in Icelandic banks and their UK subsidiaries.
	Lord Myners and the Minister with responsibility for the third sector, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West, have met over the past two months with representatives of the charity sector to gain a clearer understanding of the challenges they face.
	 Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3))
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Mr. Spellar.)

Angela Eagle: The Office of the Third Sector, in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, has been working to ascertain the full extent of investment assets affected by the situation with the Icelandic banks. Third sector representatives involved in this work include the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Charity Finance Directors Group and the Charities Aid Foundation. The Charity Commission is undertaking further work that complements the efforts so far. The Office of the Third Sector has also been liaising directly with affected charities and is working closely with the Charity Commission to support charities that have deposits in Icelandic banks.

Mark Hoban: In these discussions, has consideration been given to a temporary funding facility for charities with money locked up in Icelandic banks to help see them through to the distribution that the administrator may make, which could be in one or two years' time?

Angela Eagle: The hon. Gentleman asks a reasonable question. He is really talking about the Government providing an unsecured loan facility for affected charities, but we do not feel that that would be an effective use of public funding, simply because there is no additional source for such a grant fund to be drawn from. The money would have to be taken out of moneys already earmarked for charitable purposes by the Office of the Third Sector, which would mean taking money out of a series of initiatives that have been decided on for strategic reasons, including third sector capacity building, volunteering, public service delivery and social enterprise programmes.
	We could do that, but if one looks at the list of charities that are most affected by the freezing of their assets in Icelandic banks, all are worthy but not all tie in directly with objectives that we would normally expect public money to be used for. I am a great lover of cats, and Cats Protection is one of the charities. How would we distinguish between helping one charity and another in that context, and do so in a way that could be seen to be fair legally?

Christopher Huhne: Will the Minister give way?

Angela Eagle: I will give way in a minute. Opposition Members are right to be concerned but there are no easy answers to the issue, short of guaranteeing all the wholesale depositors as well as the retail depositors. That is a large amount of money, and we would be criticised for using it in that way. A blanket guarantee is not possible. Thinking about whether one could pick out one charity rather than another without being invidious or subject to a series of legal challenges is a complete minefield. I ask hon. Members to think carefully about that. We all would like to be able to do something effective in circumstances as difficult as these. The Government are doing what we can, without getting into that minefield, and we will give the support we can. I can assure hon. Members of that, but there are no easy answers. I am happy to give way again, but I hope that those concerns that I have expressed are being taken on board, because they are very real, and difficult to get around.

Christopher Huhne: As someone who covered the Treasury for many years as a journalist, I am acutely aware of the traditional attitude that the Treasury takes towards public money, and I would not want it to be other than extremely careful with public money. However, it seems to me that there are two ways in which the Minister might proceed. One of them is that where a charity is in receipt of public fundingas Naomi House is, to the tune of 330,000, as the Minister pointed outit is clearly embarked on the process of meeting public purposes. Therefore, one clear distinction that the Minister could draw, when extending help to some charities and not others, would be to distinguish between charities that are embarked upon meeting public purposes, which is already recognised in the fact that they are in receipt of public funds, and those that are not.
	May I try to help the Minister on another issue as well? She takes the traditional Treasury view that if funding is to be found for one purpose, it must come from somewhere else. However, this is a genuine contingency; it is genuinely unforeseen. It therefore falls well within the potential remit of the Contingencies Fund. Is it possible to use resources from that fund?

Angela Eagle: I am not going to make new Treasury policy at the Dispatch Box now, especially when, as I have pointed outI hope the hon. Gentleman recognises this, although he did not say that he didthere are genuinely difficult issues in trying to provide support in a consistent and fair way, without reaching the stage where there are simply too many implications for other areas of public expenditure. I am happy to think about what he has said, but I hope he will recognise that there are very difficult issues in respect of whether wholesale, rather than retail, depositors ought to be supported as he suggests.

Mark Oaten: I understand the difficulty that the Minister faces, and I myself am also struggling to find a way around it. Setting aside the arguments that are being put forward, might the Minister be flexible on this issue? If we discover that the primary care trusts are struggling significantly in respect of funding to fill the gap that is now created because of the Naomi House situation, will those public bodies be able to call on the Department of Health to fill that gap? There will clearly now be a gap. They will need additional funding to do the work that Naomi House was doing. That will be the provision of money not to a charity, but to fill the gap that is caused by the PCTs now having to do the work that Naomi House previously did.

Angela Eagle: All I can say is that Members who are working to bring these difficulties to the House's attention must carry on doing that. We need to be kept in touchas I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for the third sector is being kept in touchwith developments, and we will keep our eye on this issue. That is all that it is possible for me to say at this stage.

Oliver Letwin: I wonder whether the Minister has quite taken the force of the point made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten). We do not yet know what any PCT will have to do. If it transpires that because this matter was not investigated by the Government now, some months from now more public money is being spent on providing a service than would have been spent if the outreach service, for example, had been funded at this stage through Naomi House, that would amount to an increase in public expenditure. It would be sad, to say the least, if there were both a gap in provision and an increase in public expenditure, when there could have been less public expenditure and no gap in the service.

Angela Eagle: I understand the logic of the right hon. Gentleman's argument. I just ask that Members with a direct constituency interest keep my hon. Friend the Minister responsible in touch with developments. I will also endeavour to ensure that the relevant health Minister is made aware of the content of this Adjournment debate, so that we can keep an eye on this situation as it develops. Again, however, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that there are difficulties in contemplating wholesale depositor protection. That is not possible, and it is very difficult to think about which charities might qualify for special attention over and above others. It is very difficult to see how, despite the helpful suggestions that have been made, one charity could be picked over another.

Oliver Letwin: I promise that this is the last time that I shall intervenebut I was not suggesting, and I am not sure that the hon. Member for Winchester was, either, that there should be special protection for any wholesale depositor. I was suggesting that it might, as a public policy of the Department of Health, be rational to fund, at least in the interim, a service that is of importance as a health service.

Angela Eagle: As I said, I shall draw the attention of the relevant Minister to our debate. Despite what people think, the Treasury is not in control of everything. It is for the relevant Ministers to think about the implications of developments in their own areas, rather than for me to commit them from the Dispatch Box to do all sorts of things, given that they are unsighted, and are not even present. I am not sure that they would thank me for making such commitments. However, I undertake to point out to them the nature of the debate that we have had.
	With that, I hope that the hon. Member for Basingstoke will convey to her constituentsand the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), in whose constituency Naomi House is, will convey to hishow aware the Government are of the circumstances being faced, and how helpful we wish to be, particularly in respect of developments as they occur. I also hope that hon. Members will recognise the difficulties that we face in this respect.

Maria Miller: I just wish to make one simple point on behalf of my constituents, and others throughout the seven counties who use this facility. They will find what the Minister has said compelling in the light of the grave financial problems that this country faces, but somewhat at odds with what her right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said in Winchester when taking part in an interview, and specifically talking about Naomi House. She said that she would not
	leave them on their own.
	I think that Naomi House could be forgiven for feeling very much on its own after today's debate.

Angela Eagle: That was rather an uncharitable intervention, because I have done my best this evening to set out some of the difficulties with the difference between retail and wholesale depositors, and them the implications of them. I do not believe that this Government are leaving the charitable sector on its own. Its representatives have met two different Ministers, we are in contact with developments and we have met the range of organisations that I listed to deal with the ongoing situation. The point at issue is whether wholesale depositors can be converted into something else and helped in part, because it is not possible to guarantee all wholesale depositorsindeed, many Members of this House would not regard that as a remotely acceptable development, if it were to occur.
	We face difficulties, but I would like to emphasise again that this Government have not left charities on their own. We are working with them to see what we can do to assist them as this process goes on. We will continue to do that, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be assured by my suggestion that that is so.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned .